Oh I've just missed that theme music so much!
Welcome back to another season of Survivor. As explained in the pre-season Form Guide, this year we have four tribes split down age and gender lines. Apparently they have proper tribe names, but everyone (including Jeff) is calling them the "younger men", the "older men", the "older women" and the "younger women". Bobby bestowed a far catchier nomenclature: the Beefcakes, the Love Boat crew, the Golden Girls and the Spice Girls (and if he's old enough to know about the Love Boat what's he doing on the younger men's tribe?).
In one of the most exciting opening scenes I can remember, the tribes each had to pick a member to participate for them in the first reward challenge before they'd even had a chance to meet each other. Austin's tongue was hanging out so far perving at the Spice Girls that he tripped over it as the race started. Terry was first to smash enough human skulls to find a hidden amulet. Danielle bragged about her athleticism, so it was no surprise when she lost and her team missed out on flint to make fire. The Spice Girls also had to leave a member behind on Exile Island, but more about that later.
On arrival at their beach the Golden Girls got stuck straight into making fire, finding water and building a shelter. The Love Boat crew did the same. The Beefcake guys played a little coconut baseball, then were led by Aras the yoga instructor in a meditation to help them start fire, which was far less effective than flint v machete. The Spice Girls found a dead turtle, which momentarily distracted them from the effort of avoiding making a decision about where to build a shelter.
A couple of individuals stood out early.
- Cirie is afraid of machetes and leaves, or more specifically what lives under the leaves and is left homeless by the machete. She's never been camping. It shows.
- Shane complained about his team mates being morons, but he was the only one wearing a woollen beanie on a tropical island. He's detoxing from his three-pack-a-day smoking habit. I hope for his sake he means three of those 15-packs Phillip Morris makes especially for school kiddies on limited pocket money.
- Dan the retired astronaut and Terry the retired F-14 pilot formed a Right Stuff alliance and promised never to lie to each other. I'm laughing already.
- Sally has been taking fashion hints from Jana Pittman and wears long socks with shorts, but otherwise seems pretty sensible.
- Austin's bum cleavage peeking out the top of his shorts wins the prize for the first body part to be pixilated this season.
- Misty is not a rocket scientist, she's a "missile engineer".
- Tina's hair is long, blonde, curly, and looks like Two Minute Noodles.
As mentioned, the Spice Girls had to leave a member behind on Exile Island overnight as punishment for failing the first challenge. In a riveting game of rock-paper-scissors, Misty lost and got the first chance to look for the Individual Immunity Idol hidden there. (Jeff claimed to have given her clues as to its whereabouts, but I rewound the video trying to work out what they were and I'm stumped.) The Individual Immunity Idol idea is alliterative and recycled, but the twist this year is that one may wait until after one has been voted off before unveiling one's possession of it, and completely throw the strategy of one's back-stabbing tribemates.
Since there's no fire and no fresh water on Exile Island, Misty had to eat worms to fuel her fruitless search for the Individual Immunity Idol. She played a pretty ingenious trick when reunited with the rest of the Survivors by pretending that she'd found it, but we all expected her to be smart because she's a missile engineer and brunette, which is Hollywood speak for 'smart' the same way that 32 years of age is 'older' for a woman. Now we have to wait and see whether anyone has the guts to call her on it, or whether they simply don't bother either a) looking for the idol themselves, or b) voting for her.
The immunity challenge involved the usual combination of diving under water to release hooks, raft paddling, marine grade plywood, sand digging, puzzle solving, grappling hooks and coloured flags to show who won. The Spice Girls had dug up the puzzle clue before the Beefcakes had even beached their raft, but in the end the Golden Girls lost the challenge in no small part thanks to Melinda just standing there doing nothing.
Luckily for her, nobody heard Jeff point that out because she survived the first trip to a magnificent cave-themed Tribal Council set. Everyone talked about how much tougher Survivor is in real life than it looks on TV, and Cirie's advice to her fellow Americans was "If you're at all like me, STAY ON THE COUCH!" (and for Tom Cruise that's stay seated on the couch). Since she's probably the most entertaining member of the Golden Girls it's lucky for the producers that she also survived a surprise vote that saw Tina the 'lumberjill' sent home first. Tina had started the fire, found the water supply and more importantly found a very large and very live fish stranded on rocks by the outgoing tide, but once she'd shown everyone else how to do it all she was dispensable.
Jeff, who seems to be getting more grumpy every season, was less than amused by their strategy, but he's got a new Crocodile Dundee hat to keep him company so he'll cope. Next week we get the traditional night 2 thunderstorm, which is guaranteed to both amuse and provoke immediate shelter improvements. I honestly don't know how the producers manage to arrange that every season...
