MONDO EXTRAS

Then, a "note arrive[s] that change[s] everything." Silas, Frank, and Teresa of Samburu and Tom, Lex, and Kelly of Boran get freaky Friday-ed. Mixed up tribal confusion ensues: Boran members work hard; Samburu members are lazy. Tom goes to live at Frank's house and Frank goes to live at Tom's house and their parents get remarried! I then christen the tribes Boranew and Sambutwo to avoid confusion.

At Sambutwo, Brandon suggests that they take new partners on night watch duty so that they can get to know each other better. He says he'll be the bad guy and claim the first watch, and Tom says he'll go with him. In a confessional, Tom tells us that everything in Africa -- the weather, the animals, etc. -- are a challenge, "and then here you are in camp with a powder puff." We see Tom and Brandon sitting side by side in the dark looking awkward...or post-coital. Tom continues in his confessional that the first thing he had to do was ask Brandon "straight up" about his sexuality -- to get it off his own shoulders "and get the burden out." Tom tells Brandon, "Well, you'll have to tell me a little bit more about your lifestyle. I got a lot of questions." Brandon says, "About what?" and Tom shit-mouths -- or is it Tom-mouths? -- "Well, uh, are you, uh...are you gay?" Brandon curtly answers, "Uh huh. I am." Tom then says, "See when I saw you, you know, we didn't know each other, I said, ah, 'Hell, I think he's gay!'" He also says he thought, "He's pretty!" Brandon, I think, says, "I wish I was." Oh, Brandon, you're so very pretty with your pretty blue eyes, and you don't even know it! Tom tells Brandon that he hasn't ever known a gay man, and Brandon PSAs that "a lot of people know 'em; they just don't know 'em." Tom begins a story about getting in trouble in a gay bar when he was in college; thankfully, we don't hear the resolution of this jolly tale. We cut to bitchy but good-natured Brandon telling us in a confessional about his Tom time. He says, "He'd gone to a gay bar or something, I don't even know, I really wasn't payin' that much attention to him. You know, with Big Tom you can't get mad about anything he says because he says it with a smile. I mean, he's very funny." And Brandon is very tolerant. I'd like to see these guys in the final two. In a confessional Tom says, "That's his life and I guess if that's the way you wanna live it, have at it. But it sure ain't mine." No kidding. Back at camp, Brandon points out that he and Tom have the most in common of all the S16 because they both grew up on farms. He sweetly says, "At least we can talk about food...and iced tea." The two then continue -- under the pointedly starry sky -- to reminisce over country fried chicken and "popcorn bread and beans." Brandon says he misses "cornbread dipped in buttermilk," and we pan away from them with Tom reminiscing that his grandparents did that all the time but he "never did acquire the taste for it."