Survivor Palau: week 10

Her name was Ja-nu
She was a showgirl
With brown Koror buff in her hair
Was she wearing underwear?

Sorry, but last night’s episode was all about camp drama so the Barry Manilow opening number seemed fitting. The real theme of the show, however, was Survivor’s own wannabe star slowly but surely losing her mind.

The persecution of Janu started early, with Jenny and Katie gossiping audibly about the crazy look on her face at Tribal Council the night before. Rousing herself from the hammock, Janu laid into Katie and gave us one of the best catfights of the season so far, even if some of the barbs didn’t make a whole lot of sense: does anyone know when "comedienne bee" became an insult? Perhaps it’s a Vegas thing.

Janu got her own back in the reward challenge. She ended up in a team with Tom, Caryn and Gregg with two G’s in a race against the others to build a scaffold out in the water (with the help of some boo-ees) and rescue a flag. Looking at first like she’d wimp out and not help – which is exactly what Katie did to her team – Janu instead led the charge up the scaffold and back to the beach, the others trailing in her wake of manic energy.

As part of the reward Janu got to watch the floorshow for once instead of participating in it. A visit to a traditional Palauan village included women in grass skirts and coconut-shell bras, and a feast that fortunately excluded both balut and Survivor Pringles. Not wanting to let the limelight go for too long, Janu excused herself and discretely puked in a bush while a local woman held her hair back in a touching integration of Western tradition. Having made room, Janu then tucked into the supplies that Gregg took back to camp for those who’d missed out. Was it part of a plot to make everyone want to get rid of her, or was her mind already too broken for that degree of scheming?

Somebody at Channel 9 must be getting these emails, because this week’s promo was spot-on and there really was a big twist to the immunity challenge, at least for anyone who hadn’t seen the ads. In a test of nerves the Survivors had to hang in the water from the roof of a cage while the tide came in and steadily reduced the amount of breathing room they had. Most of them lasted around an hour, knowing that the first to bail out would get the "big surprise" anti-reward of a night alone on a deserted isle, but Janu got cold after a couple of minutes and panicked at the merest suggestion from Jeff that she might be panicking. It was back to high school for everyone else, laughing at Janu until Jeff told them to stop being so mean. Haven’t they seen Carrie and learnt not to pick on the weird girl? If Palau is anything like Vanuatu there’s easy access to plenty of pig’s blood.

As soon as Tom had outlasted Ian and won back the immunity necklace, Janu was whisked away and left on a remote beach with just flint, a machete and some water. They were all the props she needed for the next stage of her descent into a madness of Shakespearian proportions, dancing around the fire under the stars and singing to herself, "It’s all about me." Don’t worry love, there’s 23 minutes of the episode left for you to hog.

Back at camp, Gregg with two G’s claimed that voting Janu off next would be an emotional reaction, whereas voting Stephanie off would be a strategic one. Since his girlfriend Jenny is the only person who seems to have a problem with Stephanie, I suspect it’s a sexual reaction for Gregg. His libido will get him in trouble if he doesn’t remember the prophetic final line of Copacabana: "Don’t fall in love…"

Janu learnt from last week’s mistake and was far more vocal at Tribal Council about wanting to be voted off. Everyone else said they were voting on the basis of threat, not worth, confirming both Stephanie's and Janu’s worst fears. But wait! Earlier that day Ian and Tom had tried to somehow convince Gregg to keep Stephanie, without exposing that she is a core part of their alliance and Gregg and Jenny are just add-ons. Ian seized on a chance remark of Jeff’s to remind Janu that she could lay down her torch and quit at any time. Janu digested this news with the dramatic eye rolling of a silent movie starlet, grabbed the option, grabbed her torch and walked out of the game, taking Josephine’s stake in the sweep with her.

Even Barry Manilow couldn’t top that.

Survivor Palau: week 9

A papal conclave has nothing on Survivor when it comes to ceremonies and rituals around voting. Unfortunately the liturgical rhythm of Tribal Council has been upset by Ulong’s implosion so there was no vote last week, no "the tribe has spoken" and this week no formal merging of the tribes, no new buffs and no lame effort to come up with a new tribe name.

Day 22 was an emotional roller-coaster for Stephanie. Alone at camp and struggling to find food and firewood (since everything close to camp and easy to retrieve had already been collected long ago), it only took a crappy tree mail "poem" and a new Koror buff to reduce her to tears.

Coby used last week’s product placement shampoo reward to set up a salon out in the ocean, where he held Caryn captive with the fear we all have that our hairdressers will mutilate us if we don’t agree with everything they say. Stephanie’s arrival gave him a brand new audience, and he wasted no time in dragging her aside and giving her the lowdown on who is aligned with whom. He told her there’s one alliance of Tom, Ian and Katie, with Jenny and Gregg with two G’s also attached. The other alliance comprises Coby, Janu and Caryn. Hmmm, if I were Stephanie would I join the smaller or the larger alliance? Gee, that’s a tough one.

The funniest thing was Coby’s piece to camera, laughing at Katie for trying to claim there was some special bond between her and Stephanie with the words "Remember the first day? Remember the first day?" Of course we know from last week that Tom, Ian, Katie and Stephanie formed an alliance before the tribes were picked, so in that context Katie’s comment makes logical – if not terribly subtle – sense.

The two Palau locals who turned up didn’t get quite as warm a reception as Stephanie, at least not until after they’d shown the tribe how to catch fish and drink rum out of a coconut. Tom learnt the second lesson especially well, and behaved like the embarrassing uncle that almost ruins the wedding (and don’t pretend there’s not at least one of those in YOUR family!). By that stage Coby had managed to stuff up yet another clumsy attempt at political intrigue by volunteering to stay and help catch bait, then getting huffy when the alpha males all quickly replied "OK" and headed out fishing with their new Palauan buddies.

By the time we got to the immunity challenge the show had found its page in the prayer book and was back on track with an ancient and traditional contest: who can stand on a tiny platform the longest? In theory it makes for pretty boring TV, but people will happily do unpredictable things for food after three weeks without sugar and caffeine. Coby and Janu both jumped into the water and gave up any chance of immunity in exchange for a plate of donuts. As Katie pointedly observed out loud, "Either they want to go home or don’t think they’re in danger of going home." In an echo of Survivor Amazon, Ian offered to take his clothes off for chocolate and peanut butter but settled for chocolate chip cookies and milk. At the three hour mark, and realising that Tom wasn’t giving in for anything, Stephanie and Caryn both quit at the offer of pizza and the game was finally over.

Another great Survivor tradition is editing that gives no clue who’s going home. It was inconclusive grey smoke all around, with Stephanie declaring herself 80 or 90 percent likely to be voted off, and Janu almost pleading with everyone to send her home. Janu might be lazy, and Jenny especially might feel threatened by Stephanie’s strength and popularity, but Coby had alienated most people with his sooking and was voted out in a 7-2 decision.
Coby is therefore the first member of the Jury, and I’m out of the sweep. He was delusional right to the end, claiming that he was voted out because he’s a threat. Janu seemed shocked – and downright annoyed –that she wasn’t voted off because she obviously wants to go home. She won’t be so quick to quit next week though (if we can believe the ad) because the first person to bail out will be sent to live Stephanie’s hermit-like existence for an undetermined period of time.

An anti-reward challenge is a new concept for Survivor. Still, traditions have to start somewhere…

Survivor Palau: week 8

Now that’s more like it. This week’s Survivor had twists, turns, great interviews, product placement and a few surprises. But most of all, it had a Gross Food Challenge.

The biggest disappointment on Survivor Vanuatu was the absence of this classic event, which usually goes to air just as we’re eating dinner. Balut is a delicacy in Palau. If, like me, you’d never heard of it before you’re probably wishing, like me, that you could go back to that happy era of ignorance. Balut is a fertilised duck egg, about 20 days old, at which stage the beak, claws and feathers are fully formed. You just peel away the shell, and chow down! Four Survivors (including Ian, who loves baby animals) ate thirty of these between them, with a tie-breaker race to eat five. Bobby Jon showed yet again that he’s a few analogies short of a metaphor by shoving them all in him mouth at once. Tom took it slow and steady and won, so we were treated to ninety seconds of Bobby Jon’s mouth hanging open in shock that he lost, with semi-chewed feathers and beaks falling out randomly.

It was gross food back at Koror’s camp, too. An apparent lack of taxidermists in Palau means the ants, flies and rats are having a feast on Tom’s trophy shark head and the food scraps left around camp, much to Coby’s disgust. "The rats have become bolder and bolder and it’s all our tribe’s fault because nobody will listen to me." The gay contestants always give the best interviews, and Coby – as predicted in the form guide, thank you very much – is no exception, especially now that James is no longer hogging the spotlight with his redneck rambling.

The one bit of cleaning everyone actually wanted to do was take a shower. Tom’s efforts with the Balut (and I promise it’s the last time I’ll mention that word) won Koror a 55 gallon tank of fresh water with a shower attachment, and a gift basket of toiletries that blatantly promoted a new orange-flavoured mouth wash among other treasures. Tom declared the fresh water was only to be used for drinking. The girls stood there, loofas in hand, big puppy eyes pleading with him to let them freshen up, but he stood firm. They eventually backed down, and I suspect it’s because they know it’ll be easier to create a big target on his back if there’s a nice thick layer of dirt there to draw in.

Hygiene standards weren’t much better at Ulong. Stephanie is exfoliating as best she can with sand and salt water, but Bobby Jon is apparently getting a bit on the nose. In the night’s second biggest gross-out we also saw him getting a bit out of his nose by covering one nostril and blowing as hard as he could, a procedure eloquently described by Stephanie as a "snot rocket".

The immunity challenge included all the essential ingredients: swimming, releasing things tied under the water, marine-grade ply wood, a word puzzle and a ceremony where the immunity idol is handed to Koror. Yet again Ulong went out strong, but (in your best Maxwell Smart voice) missed it by that much. They never had a chance, really. Koror has eight people to help gather food, water and firewood (although if you believe Coby only one person is actually doing that), and six who can do all the paddling to the challenge site while those who will compete save their strength. The two remaining members of Ulong have to do everything for themselves, and in a shock announcement we discovered that soon it’ll be one person doing it alone because at Tribal Council they’d be competing against each other for individual immunity, with the loser automatically out of the game. Bobby Jon announced, "There’s no Ulong any more, it’s Team Bobby Jon now". Just remember: there’s no "I" in Team Bobby Jon, but there’s a "boob" if you look close enough.

After a demonstration at camp of Bobby Jon’s fire making skills, and an admission during Tribal Council that making fire is not Stephanie’s strong point, Jeff announced that immunity would go to the person who managed to light their torch first by – you guessed it – building a big fire. The cocky look on Bobby Jon’s face soon turned to the same stunned one we saw earlier (minus the bird bits falling out of his mouth) as Stephanie won. In a final humiliation, Bobby Jon had to light his torch especially so that Jeff could snuff it out again.

Now it gets really interesting, although probably less so for Graeme since he’s out of the sweep. Stephanie won’t miss the snot rockets, but she might miss the help around camp and even the basic level of companionship Bobby Jon offered. The ad gives no indication of how long she’ll be alone for, but we do get a tantalising preview of a big hissy fit from Coby in the first hints of a Koror implosion. With entertainment like that, who needs a gross food challenge!

Survivor Palau: week 7

This week’s ad promised "something that’s never been seen on Survivor before", so let’s run through some options of what that might be:

1. The tribe with the best SOS sign wins reward (nup, they’ve used that challenge idea several times before);
   
2. The first tribe to arrange the big pieces of marine-grade plywood and solve a puzzle wins immunity (ditto);
   
3. A romance develops between two tribe mates (well we’ve already had Kim and Jeff "suckin’ face and stuff" this series so that can’t be it);
   
4. Ulong wins immunity (don’t be ridiculous!); or
   
5. Someone brutally slaughters an animal with a knife (but Michael killed the bush pig in Survivor Australia, so maybe that’s not it either).
   

Technically speaking, nobody has ever killed a shark with a machete before last night’s episode. Actually I don’t think that’s ever been done anywhere before, so Channel 9 is wrong yet again but I’ll go easy on them this time.

Ian struggled with both reality and math this week. First he claimed that a clam tried to eat him, then he calculated that the six to seven pounds of that clam’s flesh divided by eight people equals "almost half a pound of meat each". Dolphins can count better than that (perhaps he gets them to do his homework for him). At least he was smart enough to use the clam blood as burly instead of his cut foot, and then to stay out of the way as Tom dashed down the beach, waving his machete like a demented pygmy, and decapitated the shark. The scene with the boys taking turns to poke it with sticks was taken out of the ad some time around Thursday night, so people must have complained either that it was frightening their children or that it was giving away all the good bits!

A typically crap tree mail poem explaining the reward challenge informed both tribes, "You can only use three". Since that’s the total number of Survivors one tribe has left it was something of a tautology, but Ulong’s staggering ineptitude has forced the producers to abandon the rule that you can’t sit the same people out in back-to-back challenges to balance up the numbers. Ulong’s SOS message in the sand – "Ulong" – showed admirable team spirit but was barely visible from the air. Koror’s "Got Food?" was answered in the affirmative via a crate of army rations and three bottle of red wine (even though everyone knows you drink white wine with shark).

Gregg with two G’s is complaining that he can’t have a great conversation with Jenny the Nanny. He says it’s because everyone else automatically thinks they’re strategising. Personally I have a range of other ideas why that might be. I suppose if I can’t say something nice I’m eminently qualified to be writing this newsletter, but that story has plenty of time to mature so let’s just leave it there for now.

If you were thinking of getting a tattoo this week, consider including the words, "Don’t get Jeff Probst mad!" Who knows what Ulong did to him (maybe he just hates losers) but Survivor’s host has been asking some terribly harsh questions at tribal council all series and this week he fought them on the beaches, too. In front of Koror he asked Bobby Jon how the fishing is going, knowing full well that because he’s afraid of sharks all he’d caught was a smallish clam and a fish the size of a CD (thickness, not diameter). Koror – and millions of people around the world – just openly laughed at them, which wasn’t a good motivational start to a challenge where success depended on Bobby Jon’s intellectual prowess.

Maybe Bobby Jon just wasn’t as good as Coby at flailing his wrists about to show the others how he wanted the puzzle pieces moved. Stephanie took over but it was too late for Ulong. Back at camp she showed some impressive manipulating skills in convincing Bobby Jon to vote with her, and I tend to agree with his assessment that she can go all the way to the end. Ibrehem won’t be going any further though, so that’s Sandra out of the sweep.

Usually the tribes merge when there’s a total of ten Survivors left. There’s no hint of it in the ad for next week, but something has to change because Stephanie and Bobby Jon can’t vote each other out. Mind you, if Koror keep eating the way they did this week they’ll be too bloated to be competitive. Hey maybe that’s what Channel 9 was talking about; Survivor’s first ever case of someone actually gaining weight.