[Trending News] Deal or No Deal Island Recap: Hot Mess Express

When you watch enough reality-competition shows, it’s easy to forget just how hard they are. It’s not just about the physical challenges. In fact, it’s barely about that. To win a game like Deal or No Deal Island, you have to be good at social strategy. You need to know how to convince as many people as possible that you have their backs, in spite of the obvious fact that everyone, including you, is only looking out for No. 1. In other words, you need to be a master manipulator. This might seem obvious, but apparently, not everyone grasps the concept. Case in point? C.K., who approaches this game with the subtlety of a piano falling on a cartoon character’s head.

Actually, the piano comparison isn’t entirely fair. That would imply that C.K. is hurting someone else’s game more than her own. The flameout we just witnessed feels more like a classic Wile E. Coyote bit. Sure, C.K. called out a bunch of players’ scheming, but strategically, this tantrum has left her floating in midair, grimacing into the camera right before a big fall. She might take a few people down with her, but at this point, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where she doesn’t crash and burn.

As we all remember, last week dealt a crushing blow to Team Family. Lete, Doctor Will, Seychelle, Phillip, and C.K. conspired to get M.G. out, reducing the Family to three players — Survivor royalty Parvati and David and their “son,” Dickson. For those keeping track, this leaves La Shell as the only player not in any sort of alliance — which might explain why she’s so often in the bottom. One would think that with this powerful alliance, C.K. would be sitting pretty, but alas, if you give this woman a gun, she’ll aim it at her own foot every time.

Things are not looking good for the Family. Parvati and David want Dr. Will out, and Dr. Will, meanwhile, is beginning to suspect that David has won one of these games before — which could hurt David if he tells the group. Parvati’s challenge-based alliance with Phillip was already on shaky ground after they lied to each other last week, and Parv’s attempt to turn Phillip against Dr. Will by saying he’s the kind of person who “probably bullied” Phillip when he was younger didn’t go over well.

At the start of this week’s episode, C.K. and Lete agreed they’d team up and let the big threats in this game pick one another off. Brilliant! Too bad C.K. just proved she has no idea how alliances actually work.

This week’s excursion was at once physical, psychological, and social. The players each had to jump from one of three increasingly tall platforms to grab a ring attached to a briefcase. The high-value cases on the tallest platform guaranteed safety from facing the banker. The middle tier held two cases, only one of which was valuable enough to provide immunity. Any of the four cases on the lowest tier would guarantee vulnerability. Instead of grabbing a case for themselves, each player needed to jump for another player.

Seychelle, who’s slowly emerging as a smart tactician, helped set the terms of the game from the jump. She promised that if anyone grabbed a high-value case for her, she’d return the favor. Other players, including Lete, promised the same. This is where things got messy.

Phillip got to jump first and grabbed a high-value case for Lete, who saved him last week — which disrupted Lete and C.K.’s plan to jump for each other. Lete’s no dummy, so she wanted to keep her word and jump for Phillip. Instead of rolling with the punches, C.K. basically gave Lete an ultimatum and implied that if Lete didn’t jump for her, their alliance would suffer. Why, though? I truly cannot fathom it. In that moment, C.K. struck me as a person who had no friends in high school — not because people didn’t like her, but because she kept a close watch on everyone’s MySpace Top 8 and took them way too personally.

Funnily enough, C.K.’s turn came up next. Because she knew Lete planned to jump for Phillip, she announced that she’d grab a low-value case for Dickson — another dunderheaded move. C.K. claimed that Dickson was “the easiest target” because he sent Storm Wilson home two weeks ago, but really, this just felt like her own vendetta against him talking. Everyone’s moved on from hating Dickson except her, and all she accomplished is giving yet another person one more reason to root against her.

Somehow, it got worse from there. When C.K. reached into the bucket to pick another player, she visibly peeked in order to find Lete’s name. Lete was aghast. Host and DONDI referee Joe Manganiello scolded her. C.K. redrew and grabbed Will’s name, but the damage was done. Everyone now sees her as a cheater.

From there, things got predictable. Dickson grabbed C.K. a low case as payback. Will “tried” to grab Seychelle a high-value case but purposely missed because he wanted to lose the game and face the banker again. Parvati blocked Will from getting that power by grabbing him a high-value case, guaranteeing his safety. David took advice from Parvati and grabbed Phillip a high-value case so that Lete (who is both tall and good at challenges) would jump to protect him, and she did. Seychelle and La Shell both jumped for one another and missed. Seychelle, who’s terrified of heights, declined to jump again, landing her at the bottom. This left Parvati and La Shell without cases; they jumped for each other and successfully grabbed the two mid-range cases.

Lete, Phillip, Will, and David came out safe. Lete got the highest-value case for the second week in a row ($3.5 million), so she got to decide once again who would face the banker. Her choices? C.K., Dickson, Seychelle, and La Shell.

After her embarrassing performance, C.K. wanted to play the banker to redeem herself, and Lete went with it after C.K. said she’d get Dickson out if she won. This is when C.K. somehow found a way to drill through rock bottom straight into hot lava.

For some reason, C.K. thought it was a good idea to tell Parvati that Phillip was in on getting M.G. out. She outed the entire plot again at the banker’s temple, naming and shaming each player who was involved — the same people who could have been her allies if she’d just kept her mouth shut. Her reasoning? Everyone in this game is a “liar,” and spilling her guts would reset the game by forcing everyone to start rebuilding. Parvati, who knows how these games are played, was happy to “sit back and watch that hot mess express take itself off a cliff.” So was Dr. Will. So much for letting the sharks eat each other. With this foolish stunt, C.K. has basically labeled herself a pariah. No one’s going to want to work with her now.

C.K. played an exceedingly average game of Deal or No Deal, knocking everything except $250 and $2 million off the board. The banker’s final offer? $925,000. Sadly, we won’t know how that played out until next week because DONDI’s producers decided that now is the perfect time to drop the show’s first real cliffhanger. Frankly, I hate that for us. I’d be back next week whether this episode resolved itself or not, but now, like any of C.K.’s potential future allies, I’ll be doing it with a little less love in my heart than before. But whatever — this is how these games are played. We are all at the banker’s (and editors’) mercy.

But before we go, let’s just take a moment to honor Phillip’s absolutely furious response to C.K. trying to call him out. When C.K. tried to direct the heat from last week’s backroom deal against M.G. his way, he flamed her to a crisp: “If someone made a deal that kept them here that night, that was not me,” he said. “… If you go low, I will go underground — so underground that Harriet Tubman will have to call you in the middle of the night to tell you to run.” I’m surprised C.K. didn’t dissolve into a pile of ash on the spot.

See you all next week!