Survivor Cook Islands: Finale

And so Survivor is over for another season.

We started with a recap of the entire series so far and a reminder of who flirted with whom as early preparation for the reunion special. Speaking of Candice and Parvati, Adam spent a cold and lonely night alone in the shelter, sleeping by himself for probably the first time in 37 days.

The Immunity Challenge involved the usual gig of collecting bags of timber puzzle pieces, which were tied up at the ends of various rope courses. Ozzy started with the hardest course first, so while he was the last to return with his first bag (giving Yul and Adam some hope of finally beating him) his incredible grace and athleticism saw him easily catch up and be the first to have all the bags.

Jeff had warned at the beginning that it was "the hardest puzzle ever in Survivor history!" It was a four-layer compass map that only fitted together correctly one way. If you’ve ever picked up a timber cube on someone’s coffee table and said to yourself "Oh, this looks easy" you’ll know the sort of puzzle I mean. (You probably also remember the look on your host’s face as you pulled it apart, which gave you an idea of how many hours it takes them to solve it every time a guest does that.)

Adam looked like he had a chance at one point, but yet again Ozzy got the immunity necklace back. He and his friends immediately started celebrating the fact that the underdog Aitu tribe had made it to the final four, hours before it was officially confirmed by Adam being voted out. That was actually a bit rude, but hey it was only Adam.

Despite the predictable outcome it was an interesting Tribal Council. Nate limped into the jury box on crutches – which was never explained – and Adam accused both Sundra and Becky of being boring – which didn’t need to be explained because it’s true.

Something that nobody will ever be able to explain to me is why our all-minority, mutiny-surviving final four were so excited about doing the "Rite of Passage". In case you’ve managed to repress the memory, this is where we get a little montage of each voted-out Survivor and a quote from them about their experience of the game, while the remaining players collect all the torches and then burn them. We already had the recap at the start of the episode; we don’t need another! If the producers want a twist how about getting rid of that bit?

Immediately following this touching celebration of failure, the four remaining Survivors went direct to the ‘final’ immunity challenge, which only made sense after Jeff explained that this year three people instead of only two would be in the running for the million dollars.

As in previous series it was a test of "who can hold their balance longest on a gradually shrinking foothold?" Becky went out first, with Yul a surprise exit next and Sundra a shock finalist, still hanging on next to Ozzy – who nearly fell but somehow recovered half a dozen times - at the 2 hour 30 minute mark.

The final elimination Tribal Council was a mixture of dignity and humiliation. Ozzy of course had won immunity but refused to decide who out of Becky and Sundra to vote out. His suggestion of an arranged tie-vote, with the subsequent fire starting challenge to decide a winner, was accepted by everyone involved, even by Becky who’d been offered the individual immunity idol by Yul but rejected it on the grounds that she wanted to win fair and square. So far so good: everyone knows that being able to make fire with flint and machete is a core Survivor skill, one which can be practised at home. Should be a doddle. Should be an exciting outcome.

Becky and Sundra take their places, flint in hand, with the jury on the edge of its seats. Here’s where the producers went wrong: instead of lighting a fire to burn a rope and raise a flag they had to burn a rope and ring a bell. The novelty put both girls off their game. Suspense background music changed to comedy background music as the words "30 minutes" came up on screen to explain why everyone was yawning. By the one hour mark, with still not even the suggestion of a flame, Ozzy and Yul both looked mortified and Jeff looked simply furious as he finally snapped "STOP! We’re switching to matches!"

The horror didn’t end there. Sundra got a flame going, then let it go out, then ran out of matches. Luckily for everyone (except perhaps Bryant and May shareholders) Becky finally got a decent fire going and put everyone out of their misery.

The changed up final-three format had a few implications. It meant an odd number of jurors (not the 10 we’d earlier feared), but still had the potential for a tied 3-3-3 or 1-4-4 vote. It means there’s no cursed car challenge this year. And Phil didn’t get to do his routine where the person with immunity chooses who they’ll take through, and he says with a wry little smile "I’ll go tally the vote." I always love that bit!

It also had me looking at my watch and wondering how they’d get through nine jurors asking three questions each instead of seven jurors only having two finalists to grill. The answer was simply that Nate, who went first, asked Becky why she deserved the million dollars and she couldn’t give an answer to match Yul’s puppet mastery and Ozzy’s physical dominance. After that nobody even bothered asking her any more questions, confirming that the previous night’s fire starting debacle had blown her chances even more than the perception that she’d been riding Yul’s coat tails the whole way.

The rest of the questions illuminated as much about the person asking them as the person answering. Nate waived his wrists around and used lots of words like ‘brother’ and ‘respect’. Jenny made up a new word; ‘strategical’. Rebecca managed to provoke responses about depictions of minority stereotypes on prime-time TV. Adam forced the boys to trash talk each other, and Candice forced Yul (who, remember, is a management consultant) to give a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer without any further explanation. It was a struggle, but he eventually managed it.

Brad pointed out that he doesn’t know Ozzy at all and tried to correct that by asking Ozzy to describe his most challenging life experience. In a real shock, Ozzy broke down in tears talking about his non-existent relationship with his birth father, although technically he didn’t answer the second part of the question about "and how you dealt with it". And Jonathan, naturally, snatched the dying seconds of his 15 minutes to accuse everyone being untrustworthy and arrogant. Yawn.

And so onto Los Angeles for the winner announcement and the reunion. Jeff started by describing it as one of the most enjoyable out of 13 seasons so far. By the time Yul and Ozzy had four votes each it was clear that Becky wasn’t getting any. Everyone knows that Jeff has already seen the votes before he reads them out, so he was teasing when he claimed that the final vote might be for Becky and might cause a tie. It wasn’t of course, so he declared her officially in third place before reading out the final vote for… YUL!

While everyone hugged and cheered, Jeff slipped off to change into the same natty duck-egg blue v-neck sweater he wore to last year’s reunion. Yul got more opportunities to be modest and self-effacing. Ozzy confessed that Robinson Crusoe is one of his favourite childhood books, which simultaneously explained why he looked to be living his ultimate fantasy while he was on the island, and like he’d pee his pants in front of the TV cameras and all those people. The goatee he’d grown during the series really gave him the look of a Spanish Conquistador, but clean-shaven at the reunion he looked more like a scared little boy. It was a bit sad, as was his own choice of v-neck sweater.

Jonathan got to mouth off some more, and Sekou followed a tradition started by Wanda in Palau of the person who composes a special Survivor song being the first one voted off; the difference was that Sekou didn’t unveil his song until the reunion, and got to play it with the band.

Candice tried to justify her romance with Adam, while he answered the question about their current status by starting with the words "You know, Candice is a great girl…" which absolutely confirmed that they’re no longer together and he had no intention of continuing the ‘relationship’ once she’d finished her usefulness. Nate got grilled about his interactions with Parvati and first denied but then admitted that he’d fallen for her flirting, which was uncomfortable for everyone except Parvati, who seemed to enjoy the attention.

Billy, by comparison, came out the reunion looking pretty good by explaining that his declaration of love for Candice had been a combination of heat-of-the-moment and trying to pretend he didn’t need the tribemates who’d thrown a challenge so they could get rid of him. Whether it’s true or not, he was able to laugh at himself, and well all love that. Ooops, I probably shouldn’t say "We love you" so loosely. Billy, if you’re reading this please know that I’m very happily married and I meant "love" in a totally platonic sense.

Ozzy won a car (sorry, a Mercury Mariner) in an on-line vote for who played the smartest game, beating Yul by less than 1% of the vote and proving that the car curse still applies even if you don’t know about it.

Finally, and most importantly of all (well, for some of us at least), we got confirmation that there will be at least one more series. Judging by the preview, Survivor: Fiji has already been filmed and is in the editing suite (and remember that they’ve just finished filming and there’s just been another coup in Fiji. Coincidence?) The new twists in a desperate bid for ongoing relevance include one tribe living the usual Survivor deprivations while the other lives in luxury, and two individual immunity idols on Exile Island. Apparently one of the most controversial decisions ever made by a Survivor will have America talking. We don’t know yet if it will have Australia talking, since Channel Eddie has lost its first dibs on CBS programs as of 2007 and who knows what Channel 10 will do with it.

Congratulations to the winners of the office sweeps, and thanks again for all the feedback from people who have enjoyed the weekly recaps. Now grab your torches and head back to camp.

Survivor Cook Islands: week 13

I’m going to start this week with a quote from Parvati’s final video message after she was voted out: "I knew I could have worked it more in the hot tub if I wanted to, but I don’t think it would have helped my place in the game." Sure it’s putting the tart before the sauce to begin like that, but it just sums up her Survivor experience so perfectly.

Chronologically speaking the episode began with Adam and Parvati discussing how to stay in the game a bit longer despite the numbers being in favour of the still-solid Aitu alliance. Parvati pointed out that the two of them are in a position of relative weakness and that it would take a lot to achieve the goal of swinging one of the others across. She then went on to develop a strategy of doing this in a way that didn’t make it seem like that person was betraying their alliance, and planned to use lots of charm and smooth talking as her tactics. Adam's contribution was "Those four are tight. We’re gonna need to try something." Oh, and he said "Yeah, exactly!" to all Parvati’s ideas. It was like watching George W Bush at a Pentagon briefing.

This week’s tree mail ‘poem’ started with the line "It’s time to break out your swimwear…", and the rest was so excruciatingly bad that the producers left out whole lines of Yul’s recitation in a too-little-too-late demonstration of remorse. They did, however, quickly flash a glimpse of the paper so that those of us with either a deep susceptibility to subliminal messages – or a VCR, a remote control and no life – were let in on the obscure clue "Shirts will not be allowed" to go with the slightly less cryptic message of a small bucket of mud.

The winner of the reward challenge was the person who could collect the most mud without using their hands, shirts (a ha!) or any other vessel. Basically they had to roll around in a mud pit, go through an obstacle course, scrape the muck off their bodies into a bucket and then go back for more. Most of them collected between 8 and 9kg in the time limit. Parvati was third with 10 kg, and Yul just nudged into second with 10.2kg. Ozzy managed 20kg and genuinely scared the others with the proof of just how good he is regardless of what the challenge involves. The three of them, still covered in mud, got put in a small plane with plastic all over the seats for an overnight stay at a luxury resort. Sundra and Becky went back to camp to stew with increasing bitterness at their misfortune, while Adam spent a couple of days on Exile Island, eating raw shellfish and letting the flies nest in the open wounds on his leg. I’m so glad the show is on late and it’s hours since I’ve eaten.

The reward challenge provided those who wield the pixelating machine with plenty of opportunities to demonstrate their craft. Both Adam and Ozzy found themselves modesty-challenged as the combination of body weight loss and mud weight gain threatened their shorts’ tentative grip on decency. Bikini-clad girls covered in mud and rubbing their hands over their bodies also stretched a PG rating, even though the mud meant nothing was really on show (but then again an odd jewellery choice meant nothing was technically on show during Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, either).

It got even more risque on the challenge reward. Parvati might not have realised that as she showered the mud off her silhouette was clearly visible to the camera crew through the shower door. However, there was no doubt she knew what she was doing as she slithered naked into the hot tub with a nude Yul and Ozzy after a champagne and candlelight dinner. All game-strategy of course. Not auditioning for a photo spread in Ralph magazine when she gets home at all. Nooooo.

While their tactics might be different, both Yul and Parvati are equally focussed on advancing themselves in the game. We already know that Parvati "worked it in the hot tub", with Ozzy quite clearly the main target of her flattery barrage. Yul was so serious in expressing his concern about the potential consequences of her success that he didn’t even realise he’d uttered the single entendre of the series with the line, "If Ozzy responds in some way something might come up."

Maybe it was the food and the comfortable bed, or maybe it was the rejuvenating power of the hot tub, but the immunity challenge was once again Parvati third, Yul second, and Ozzy first by a very large margin. That afternoon both Adam and Parvati separately had the same conversation with puppet-master Yul, acknowledging that one of them would be sent home and asking in the nicest possible way for it to be the other.

Last week after his torch was snuffed, Jonathan said to the remaining Survivors "And I’d like my hat back at some point." Yul, being such an incredibly nice guy, duly returned said hat at Tribal Council this week. Jonathan looked absolutely delighted that Yul had made the effort. He looked somewhat less delighted after Jeff pointed out that it was a clever act on Yul’s part to suck up to a jury member. Who knows whether Yul really was being that political, or whether returning the hat was a genuine favour and he simply felt it was better to agree with the accusation rather than deny it and be accused of lying.

Jeff was just as politically provocative during the rest of Tribal Council, asking Adam whether Parvati’s performance in the hot tub had increased her chances in the game at his expense. Adam mumbled something unintelligible about he and Parvati being mates from early on the game, much to Candice’s horror in the jury box.

Finally it was the predictable 4-2 vote, with Parvati as the loser. In a triumph for multiculturalism, this season’s racial supremacy experiment has left at least one member of each original tribe in the final five. It's a small world after all.

This Friday night - at the entirely reasonable time of 8.30pm - we get the last three hours of Survivor Cook Islands with lots of elimination challenges, the jury interrogation of the two finalists, and presumably the ghastly annual walk down memory lane. Don’t miss it!