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.