Survivor Fiji: week 10

And the winner is...
Earl! For Best Actor in a
Comedy/Drama

This week’s episode was all about the few hours from the end of the Immunity Challenge until after the tribe had spoken, so I’m going to skip over much of the first forty minutes, highlights of which included:

• Dreamz trying to construct whole sentences in recognisable English to explain why he voted for Michelle when he hates Stacey so much;
• Mookie trying to have a rational strategy discussion with Dreamz and eventually giving it up as a lost cause;
• Alex trying to get Mookie to share the immunity idol with him and eventually giving it up as a lost cause; and
• Boo trying to get on Earl’s good side and not realising it’s a lost cause.

The reward challenge was the one where each person who answers a question correctly gets to smash something representing another person in a none-too-subtle way of proving you want them out. The first layer of fun is in the catty nature of the questions, such as "Who would you be least likely to invite home for dinner?" (correct answer; Boo) and "Who smells the worst?" (correct answer; Dreamz).

The game was doubly cruel to Stacey. Not only is she the person nobody wants to see again (unanimously) and the person who others feel has most wasted this opportunity, but she was the first person knocked out of the game. It was hard to tell whether was more upset by the home truths or by being denied the chance to smash anyone else’s tiles in retribution.

Cassandra got every question right, winning a night on a luxury yacht and the chance to take three other people. She won because she’s politically smart, and she proved it by choosing to take Boo and Dreamz to bribe them into her alliance, and Yau-Man because he’s worked hard and deserves a break. Oh, and because he’s really smart and knew without being told that he was there to help brainwash Dreamz and Boo, even though that task would require very, very little soap to complete.

Poor Dreamz. Everyone knows he can’t be trusted with a secret because, as Alex so tactfully put it, he gets really honest. He promised the three other Horsemen (yes they’re all still carrying on with that rot) not to tell Cassandra about the idol they found. To be fair to him, technically he didn’t tell Cassandra; he told Cassandra and Earl and Yau-Man.

There needs to be a "Nobel Prize for Politics and Acting" just for Earl. Dreamz blurted out the news about the idol and Earl pretended not to believe him. True to form Dreamz kept on blabbing fact after fact to try and prove his credibility. And the look on Earl’s face as he said "What do you mean, it’s a turtle?" was just brilliant. It takes a lot of brains to play that dumb. And no, that’s not what Dreamz is doing.

Stacey desperately wanted – needed – to win the Immunity Challenge. She held on for a long time, but couldn’t beat Yau-Man in an endurance test that favoured those with strong arms and little feet.

The next few minutes was a mess of nine people trying to arrange how to vote and not be voted out. On one side was Alex’s alliance with Edgardo and Mookie. On the other side was Earl’s alliance with Yau-Man, Cassandra and now Boo. Floating in between and spreading disinformation in both camps were Stacey and Dreamz as the two least popular and most powerful on the beach, each desperately trying to prove they can be trusted by blowing the other alliance’s secrets. Yeah, that’s how to make people trust you.

Mookie was still furious at Cassandra for sending him to Exile Island two days earlier and wanted to punish her. But for some reason his preferred order to vote out the others is Earl then Boo then Yau-Man. And he wants to vote out Earl first because he thinks Earl has the idol. I’m going to assume that he’s assuming that Earl will assume they don’t know he’s got the idol so he won’t use it and that’s how they’ll vote him out even though he’s got the idol. Something like that, anyway. It didn’t make sense to me either.

Eventually – and it really did take an unforgivable amount of time - both alliances realised that targeting the person with immunity was perhaps a risky move, so we had a few more minutes of both sides changing who they were going to vote for, depending on the latest reports from Dreamz and Stacey.

Tribal Council was one of the best ever, and I’d love to know how many cameras they had to capture each look on each person’s face. At least one of those cameras was busy capturing a shot of the jury from behind, which necessitated a lot of pixelation to cover up Lisi’s bum crack.

Stacey and Dreamz (acting separately but with the same intent) had both convinced Alex that he’d been targeted for elimination, so he took the plunge and used Mookie’s precious immunity idol. Earl and his alliance managed to look worried. Mookie looked shattered that the idol was gone. Edgardo couldn’t keep the stupid grin off his face.

True to habit, Jeff had cunningly arranged the ballot papers so that he could read them out in the most ratings-grabbing order. Cassandra got the first three votes and looked worried. Earl and Yau-Man looked sombre. Boo looked like he normally does.

Then came a vote for Mookie from Dreamz, who thought he was voting with Earl’s tribe but had actually been left out of the last few plan changes. It’s going to be fun next week watching how he responds now that it’s clear he’s lost everyone’s trust, and whether he’ll understand how he brought that upon himself.

Finally came five votes in a row for Edgardo. It might have just been the editing, or it really might have taken him that long to work it out, but he kept grinning like an idiot for several second before it sunk in that he was a goner. Mookie was furious the idol had been wasted. Alex was horrified that the idol had been wasted and that he’s only got Mookie left on his side. Cassandra and Stacey both looked relieved. Earl and Yau-Man relaxed and looked smug.

Jeff just looked bemused, especially when he announced that the surrendered idol will be hidden again and new clues left on Exile Island. Perhaps Mookie won’t be so mad next time he gets sent there. Or perhaps the ad for next week was serious when it showed him going through Earl’s bags looking for the other one. How funny that Dreamz’s Lord of the Rings analogy about the idol being ‘precious’ was so accurate, and how unsurprising that he was referring to the movie not the book. Not that Dreamz would have known to call it an analogy. And Alex wasn’t really listening when he said it so perhaps it was a soliloquy, too.

Survivor Fiji: week 9

"Not a good tree mail."
You just don’t watch this show much,
Do you Cassandra.

There simply is no such thing as a good tree mail. Well, it’s really more the crappy "poems" that come with tree mail that are the problem. (I do occasionally wonder what became of Pam Ayres; now we know.) This week we had four separate crappy "poems" inflicted on us, which surely breaches Fiji’s Charter of Human Rights.

The first one told everyone to pack up their personal belongings and paddle to Exile Island. They were not allowed to take any tools, flints or rewards. The scene had started with some loving camera shots of Moto’s bed, couch, crockery, coffee and toiletries just to remind us of what they were leaving behind. At the time it seemed like just an excuse to play some more wacky luau music, but it turned out to have a purpose. More on that later.

The note was very explicit about what they could take with them, but when they got to Exile Island there was nobody there to check their luggage, not even Jeff. Well, a few cameramen but we’re all supposed to pretend they’re not there. The person most conspicuously absent from Ravu’s boat was Lisi, and yet nobody on Moto bothered to ask where she was. They clearly didn’t care.

The look-out tower housed this week’s second note, along with new purple buffs for everyone. The note advised that the merge, which even Dreamz could see coming, has now happened and they are one tribe. It also told them to paddle back to Moto’s camp where they will all be living from now on. For Boo, Cassandra and Stacey this meant not having to experience life without a decent shelter and plentiful food. For Edguardo, Alex and Dreamz it meant a return to the good life. Mookie kept sooking about how he’s the only one who’s never lived there and slept in the bed. Either he doesn’t remember building the shelter along with everyone else on the first day, or he’s trying to garner more sympathy and therefore more pillows.

Which brings us nicely to the third note. It was sitting in the old Moto camp on top of the single set of fishing gear, the two pots, the one flint and the bare ground. While the contestants were paddling out to Exile Island the camp was totally cleaned out. There’s no shelter, no bedding, no food, no coffee and no toiletries. Nada. And we at home know exactly what’s missing because we got that little inventory at the start.

The one thing everyone – except Boo – understood was that it’s now or never for alliances. The Ravu boys each had people from their old alliances who they were supposed to target for membership of a new group. Dreamz was to win over Cassandra, Mookie was to work on Yau-Man and Michelle, while Alex was going to sweet talk Stacey. Apparently Edguardo doesn’t have any friends.

The crazy thing is that they keep referring to themselves as "The Four Horsemen". I wonder what they’ll call themselves when there’s eight members of their alliance if they all succeed in their missions? I wonder if they really thought that name through. I wonder which one sees himself as Pestilence, which as War, which as Famine and which as Death.

The names Alex and Edguardo probably use to best represent Mookie and Dreamz are Dumb and Dumber. Before leaving Ravu they grilled Mookie about whether they could trust him as the keeper of the idol, and reiterated their plan not to tell Dreamz about it yet because he couldn’t be trusted not to blab to Cassandra. It turns out Mookie can’t be trusted not to blab to Dreamz.

Alex witnessed the announcement with barely contained fury. Smooth as ever he managed to twist "You can’t be trusted" into "You just get really honest" when Dreamz quite naturally asked why they didn’t tell him at the time. As much as I love to pay out on him, the wounded look on Dreamz’ face was a bit heart-wrenching. And he got really honest in his next one-on-one to the camera pointing out how and why he doesn’t trust the other Horsemen any more.

The only person not frantically working on new alliances was Boo, who is planning to sit back, let things shake out and then take a leadership role with whichever group wins. Unfortunately for Boo, he was the top of the "first to go" list that came out of every clandestine deal-making huddle. Fortunately for Boo the Immunity Challenge shook things up again in yet another twist. And fortunately for us we didn’t have to see the tree mail notifying them of challenge.

Before it started, each person had to reach into a bag and pull out at random either an orange or green tile. This is where it gets a bit confusing. They are all still in the new purple Bula Bula tribe, but the new green and orange groups had to compete against each other for immunity and a reward. The winners would get a feast, and the losers would be punished with not just a trip to Tribal Council but another mystery note, which is a cruel punishment but not all that unusual this episode.

As twists go it was a good one but as challenges go it was unoriginal. Teams had to paddle their boat through a course, collect bags of stuff and solve a puzzle. True to the Milton-Bradley / Mousetrap / ‘For Ages 8 to 80’ spirit of the whole thing, the bags had to be retrieved from what others might have described as a coil but looked to me like the top off a big Totem Tennis(TM) pole.

Both teams reached the first one at the same time. Jeff called out that there’s a strategic technique needed to get the bags down. He need not have wasted his breath for our sake because that was obvious by the way Yau-Man was retrieving the second one for his team by the time Stacey and then Dreamz each struggled before Alex finally took over and worked it out.

Too little too late however, so the team of Alex, Michelle, Dreamz, Stacey and Mookie were forced to watch as Jeff handed over a big plate of raw steak and veggies to the winners (which is apparently their reward, even though it had been sitting out in the tropical sun for a few hours). The losers also had to brace themselves for the final note, which simply read:

You will not be going back to camp,
There will be no time to strategize.
We’re heading to Tribal Council right now.

The only question I really wanted Jeff to ask was "Lisi, you’ve been in a luxury resort for three days now; why have you still not brushed your hair?" Unfortunately his questioning consisted solely of "[Person A] give me a reason to get rid of [Person B]." Once again, Alex’s smooth tongue won the day. One by one he simply answered that he had no reason for getting rid of any of the people Jeff named until it got to Michelle, in which instance he said "I don’t know Michelle as well as I know any of the other people here." It sent a clear message to the others that leader Alex had tagged Michelle for elimination. Even Dreamz understood it, although apparently Alex also should have explained to him that ‘Michelle’ is not spelt ‘Mechelle’.

Either way, yet another girl is gone. We don’t know whether the orange and green teams will continue, but I’m sure the next tree mail will explain it in excruciating rhyme and metre.

Survivor Fiji: week 8

Memo to Lisi:
Dreamz may be a bit slow, but
You’re an idiot.

Seriously, Lisi, you’re a fool of the highest magnitude. By the time tonight’s episode went to air in Australia the entire series was finished in the U.S., so you’ve already seen the difference between your perception of reality and actual reality. Well, the editor’s version at least. Let’s go back over some of your finest moments so you can relive the shame.

The episode started with a recap of last week and your decision to tell Edguardo and Alex that the individual immunity idol – the thing that gives you protection through to the final five - is buried in your camp right where you all sleep. I understand that you’re in an alliance with them, and that you think you can trust them, but it’s a million dollars at stake.

And it turns out you really shouldn’t trust Edguardo and Alex. They filled Mookie in on the clues, and the three of them managed to dig up the idol while you and Dreamz slept on in blissful ignorance (which is virtually a permanent state for both of you). They dug a foot-deep hole in hard ground a meter from where you dozed and you didn’t even stir. You stayed in the same foetal position, backside facing the camera. It was an unflattering angle because you were wearing light-coloured pants and had previously sat on something dirty, making it look like you’d soiled yourself. Embarrassing for you, funny for us.

You’ve done some one-on-one camera interviews that were cringe-worthy, but the best of them was when you recapped the story of waking up to find Mookie playing in the dirt near your feet. We all know that he was filling the hole back in to hide the fact that they found the idol and have no intention of even telling you about it, let along sharing. Your version of the story went as follows: "This morning Mookie was trying to be a little discreet, flipping leaves and playing with the ground, and I was like, ‘What, idol digging?’ and he had no choice but to say ‘Um, yeah’ and I’m like ‘Dude, you’re gonna have to get up really early in the morning to fool an old cat like me. What’s wrong with you?"

There may actually be something wrong with Mookie, because no normal person would have been able to keep such a straight face while diligently helping you re-dig the now empty idol hole, let alone when Edguardo walked up and said "I already checked that part. It’s not there." Hey, he was telling the truth!

The reward challenge, as you may remember, involved learning to dance the traditional Fijian Meke and then performing for the locals. You were hopeless, although it’s hard to tell whether that’s because you’ve got no rhythm or because you don’t take the challenges seriously and don’t see the point of getting psyched up to try and win. At least you had the sense to only express that view to the camera, not your tribe mates. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't. Surely you didn't!

Earl was the star of the challenge, drawing on his inner Michael Jackson to get some cool black-dude dance moves happening and laughing at Boo’s "white guy thang". He needs to remember that Michael Jackson isn’t black any more, and hasn’t been a winner for a long time.

Moto is undeniably strong at collecting puzzle pieces, undoing knots and raising flags but it turns out they’re pretty good at dancing too. I’d love to have had subtitles during the judges’ deliberations at the end, but they were definitely not needed to understand the looks of disgust on their faces during Ravu’s lame effort. Jeff told them that authenticity would be one of the judging criteria, so it's inexplicable why Dreamz threw in a back flip at the end. I didn't see any Fijians doing back flips.

Lisi, the look of disgust on your face when you got sent to Exile Island again gets my award for Cat’s Bum Mouth of the series thus far. Earl explained that they chose you so nobody else in that tribe gets any clues as the location of the immunity idol. It obviously hasn’t occurred to him that you’d be so stupid as to tell anyone the clues you’ve already got. It probably hasn’t even occurred to him that the Ravu camp idol has already been found, since you’re the only one in your tribe to have seen the clues, and he knows you’re too stupid and lazy to have found it on your own.

Before you accuse me of being harsh, you’re so stupid you took shelter during a lighting storm in the lookout tower, the highest point on Exile Island. If it was just you I wouldn’t care, but you had the cameraman up there with you and he was holding a big chunk of metal. That makes you a dangerous idiot.

Yau-Man is exceedingly smart, so it’s lucky you’ve never been on the same tribe as him because it would make the comparison that much more stark. Ravu keep laughing at what a weedy little old man he is, but brains will beat brawn any day. Brains will also beat braggarts. Edguardo will never again refer publicly to his supposed archery skills after making a statement like "I never say I’m pretty good at stuff, but I’m pretty good at archery" prior to the challenge, and then not even reaching the target - let alone hitting it - when his tribe needed him to at least force a tie-breaker.

Teams took turns with a blow dart, then a spear, then a bow and arrow to hit targets. Contestants competed in the same order each time, and every time Yau-Man’s shot for Moto was so good – and Edguardo’s shot as the last person for Ravu was so bad – that Earl didn’t even need to have his turn. Yau-Man did simple but logical things like finding the balance point of the spear and choosing the straightest arrow in the quiver. Lisi, you did simple and illogical things like laughing at the failings of your own tribe.

I use the phrase "your own tribe" because you are part of that tribe whether you like it or not, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t. You described "them" as losers and a sinking ship, including one pronunciation of ‘loser’ which you extended to five syllables. You probably thought that was funny at the time. I wonder if you still found it funny watching the episode at home?

At least you weren’t a total hypocrite, telling the entire tribe that you want to be voted out because they are all losers who would lose the next challenge and you’d get sent back to Exile Island again. There’s no ‘i’ in team but there’s two in Lisi.

And yet, ten minutes before Tribal Council, you decided to hang around after all. Why? Because you wanted another chance. You’d changed your mind. You’d decided to try and hang in there, maybe, sort of. All the way through Tribal Council your best – nay, only – defence was that you wanted another chance. You wanted the others to vote for Dreamz even though he really wants to stay. You accused Dreamz of quitting halfway through challenges but then couldn’t give a single example to prove your case. You don’t even understand the concept of a Yes or No question, so I’ll explain it. When someone says "Do you want to be here? Yes or No?" you are supposed to say either 'Yes' or 'No'. "Can’t I catch a break?" and "So now I’m at fault for being honest and saying I have to think for a minute!" are not correct answers, although the latter is at least true.

The two funniest non-Lisi moments of the whole episode were:

1. Rocky running up the stairs to the Tribal Council chambers like he was out front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the stirring da-daaa-daaaaaa of Gonna Fly Now was playing the background; and
2. Dreamz attempting to pronounce ‘soliloquy’ again, and saying ‘recipitate’ instead of ‘resuscitate’. Honey, stick to words of less that four syllables.

Last week Edguardo and Alex justified getting rid of Rocky because loyalty is more important than strength when the merge is nigh. This week they decided that mental stability is even more important. Since you’re loyal but unstable, and not a very smart game player (Edguardo’s description, not mine) you’re useless. Now you even know that the vote against you was unanimous.

As Jeff said at the end, if there’s one truth in this game it’s that;
"You have to want to
Win to make it to the end."
Suck on that, Lisi.

Survivor Fiji: week 7a

It's the Wimbledon
Men's Final. No Survivor.
Early night for me!

Survivor Fiji: week 7

A jury is made
Up of twelve good men and true;
And, it seems, Rocky.

Week seven, and still not even a hint of romance. Normally by now one of the buffed young guys would have been helping one of the blonde young girls stay warm at night by snuggling up to her in the shelter. The only three women left are all on the same tribe and none of them are blonde. Also the only buffed young guy on that tribe is Boo, and they all seem to value their dignity too much to go there.

The other tribe does have Lisi, who has sort of dirty yellow hair (where her last home bleach job grew out) and is young, and she is surrounded by buffed young guys. Trouble is she’s just as buffed as they are, as evidenced by the ease with which she carried three pint glasses of beer during the reward challenge. More on that later.

Actually there almost was some romance when Edguardo sat next to Rocky on a log and tried to talk strategy. The answer to Edguardo’s question "What do you think?" was answered "I think you should [expletive and pixelation of Rocky’s potty mouth] push over unless you want to make out with me." No romance there.

No, the real romance this week was at Moto’s camp. Earl once again got the rest of the tribe away so that Yau-Man could look for the immunity idol. Digging with a pick axe and shovel that were just laying around the Moto camp was much easier than trying to do it at the Ravu camp with just a machete, and he soon had a rather cute turtle necklace in his hands. He was a bit excited. Actually he was very excited. He started kissing the turtle and didn’t stop. He may have actually licked it. Not a good look.

In his excitement he also slipped from talking about the immunity idol in the plural form ‘we’ (which featured so heavily in his negotiations with Earl) into the singular form ‘me’ (for example, "This looks so good on me!") Their plan for sharing the idol is that if they hear Earl is about to be voted out he gets it, and if it’s Yau-Man’s scrawny neck on the chopping block he keeps it. Sounds fair. I just hope they put all this in writing because I really can’t see either of them wanting to share when the going gets tough and a million dollars is at stake.

Yau-Man is still a winner in my book, though. The reward challenge involved throwing flaming balls at targets. For once teams had to set a flag on fire instead of lighting a fire to raise a flag. Gee, where do they keep coming up with all these totally original ideas?

The buffed young men of Moto all laughed when it was Yau-Man’s turn. Mookie was especially cruel in him imitation of Yau-Man’s wobbly throwing arm. He might want to remember that Yau-Man is smart and knows his physics, as proven on day one when all the brawn in the camp couldn’t open a sealed timber box by hitting it with heavy things, while Yau-Man casually dropped it on its corner – the weakest point - and smashed it open. Naturally Yau-Man’s shot landed in just the right spot and Mookie ended up looking stupid and embarrassed. Mookie could easily be the Ralph Macchio to Yau-Man’s Mr Miyagi if he were more open to learning from little old smart guys.

Mookie was happy again when Ravu finally achieved their first win for the season. Reward was a trip to a games arcade on a nearby island with all the beer and hot dogs they could eat. The Kava Bowl (that’s seriously one of the best business names I’ve seen in ages) was true to its promise and featured intoxicating substances and ten pin bowling among other delights such as Foosball, billiards, video golf, unlimited hot dogs and the ultimate reward luxury of a nice clean china toilet to throw up in.

With his camp’s idol already located, Earl didn’t even bother reading the next location clue when he got to Exile Island. It was his third trip there so he figures it’s now his, and he spent the time productively designing a logo for his new tourism resort called Earl Island (sorry, that’s nowhere near is good as The Kava Bowl). Earl works in advertising so I was expecting a slightly more integrated above-the-line campaign than just a single televised product placement and no other media presence. At the very least I thought he’d avoid an obvious mistake like forgetting to give the website address or the reservations phone number.

Yau-Man also spent a productive afternoon creating a decoy immunity idol out of half a coconut and some yellow paint before burying it where the clues say to look. If Boo gets sent to Exile Island and manages to a) read the clues and b) work out what they mean, he might go digging and find it. I’m singling out Boo because he’s the only one in that tribe stupid enough to fall for it.

I should probably just stop for a second here and confess that Boo isn’t stupid just because he can’t tell left from right. Some of the worst navigational mistakes in my marriage have occurred because I sometimes do the same thing. To my credit though, I’d have self-corrected if my darling hubby was screaming "No, LEFT! LEFT! LEFT! THE OTHER LEFT!"

To explain why left and right is important you need to know that this week’s immunity challenge involved blindfolded contestants making their way across a course to smash pinatas (charmingly made out of a human skulls) and retrieve the obligatory puzzle pieces, guided by a team mate yelling out directions. Michelle did an excellent job calling for Moto - even falling off the look-out tower in her excitement, all of which was brilliantly captured on camera - until it was Boo’s turn. She quite possibly wanted to cave his skull in with the traditional Fijian war club when her repeated screams of "LEFT! The other way! Your left!" were ignored.

She was so hoarse by the time he got it right (pardon the pun) that Yau-Man could hardly hear her when it was his turn. Boo told her to swap out, got to the top of the look-out platform and only then remembered that he was blind for some reason that was never explained (although as I said, there’s been no romance - of any kind - this season). Boo couldn't even see Yau-Man let alone tell him where to go. Now do you forgive me for being so harsh on him?

I’ve perhaps been a little bit harsh on Lisi, too. After losing the immunity challenge for the seventh week in a row the mood at Ravu was low. Rocky did his usual temper tantrum. Alex and Edguardo did the math and figured that with the merge and the switch to individual immunity challenges so close, loyalty is more valuable than physical strength. They decided to keep Lisi since she still believes her original alliance is solid and is therefore easy to manipulate (wow, she must have been embarrassed sitting home these last few weeks and learning what those boys said about her behind her back!) They even manipulated her into telling them where the Ravu immunity idol is buried. And she fell for it!

Dreamz announced that he knowz Rocky and knowz that he don’t really meanz what he sayz an all that. Dreamz also believez that Rocky knowz that hiz head'z on the choppin block tonight. Oh Dreamz, you iz sadly mistaken and you do not know Rocky at all if you honestly believe that.

Lisi was also sadly mistaken. As Jeff read her name out on the first vote she did a big fake-terrified nail-biting pantomime that wasn’t nearly as funny as she probably thought it was. The stunned look on her face as the second vote was read out, again featuring her name, was much funnier than she could have ever intended.

Unfortunately she had a good reason to look smug by the end when Rocky was announced as the seventh person voted off and the first member of the jury. She wouldn’t look so smug if she knew that her description of having had a ‘spiritual enlightenment’ on Exile Island was accessorised in the editing suite by a ‘bo-ing!!’ comedy sound effect straight out of America’s Funniest Home Video. She’s going to look like an even bigger fool next week. More on that later...