He was specifically referring to Austin, who'd woken to the stunning realisation that he'd made a huge mistake at Tribal Council the night. Apparently he confessed to faking weakness in the challenge based on the incorrect assumptions that he was about to voted out and would somehow save face by proving he's not weak after all. He was wrong on both counts, but absolutely right in guessing that perhaps the others don't trust him much any more.
I've often described the tree mails as 'crappy', and this week I'd like to tender in evidence the following words painted onto the side of a coconut:
Skill can win a boat race,
And making tough decisions takes some guts
But in political battles,
You'll always deal with nuts.
No, it wasn't a reference to Budget Night, although that's what we were missing by watching Survivor instead of the ABC tonight.
The challenge separated the nine remaining contestants into teams of three competing against each other for a prize of breakfast in bed the next day. Each team had 100 coconuts, which they had to deposit in the boats belonging to the other two teams. Once finished they had to row their own boat out to a buoy (and it's frustrating me no end that we're up to episode 9 and Jeff still hasn't said the word boo-eee), collect a flag and a fishing net, and get all the coconuts out of their boat and back to the starting point.
The politics came in deciding whose boat to put the coconuts in, since more coconuts made the boat harder to row and the unpacking bit at the end take longer. Danielle and Aras were on different teams, but that didn’t stop him from instructing her to focus on the trio with two La Mina members – including Austin - to make them lose. Danielle was having trouble carrying anything else large and round at chest height, so it was no surprise that she, Courtney and Cirie came utterly last.
More politicking ensued when the victor's right to send a loser to Exile Island was doubled to one member of each non-winning team. Aras, well and truly in Shane mode, simply told the others that he would decide and picked Austin (no brainer) and Danielle (big surprise).
The reward for Sally, Bruce and Aras was defined as "breakfast in bed". No guarantees were made that the bed would be warm and dry. In pouring rain (which in an earlier scene had sent a lonely coconut floating across the frequent lake upon which Casaya built their camp), they climbed under the sodden blankets and tucked into rolls, toast, coffee, juice and a lot of bacon, which made it all OK again.
Just as cold and sodden, but nowhere near as well fed, were Danielle and Austin on Exile Island. Austin also has a mistaken belief that "hell" is an appropriate analogy for cold, but didn't seem to mind snuggling up to Danielle for warmth, companionship and a possible addition to La Mina's voting bloc.
Terry, meanwhile, was also doing his best for the team. He knew that success depended on finding out who occupies the bottom two rungs of the Casaya pecking order and proving it to them in the hope of creating a new five-person alliance. He also knew that it would be tough to get reliable information but seemed to be relishing the challenge, so it must have been a little disappointing for him when Shane simply coughed up the information without blinking. Shane obviously wasn't listening at the start of the episode when Aras told everyone they had to be really careful not to give any information away.
Not only did Shane answer Terry's question about who would be in the final four, he bet twenty bucks on it, giving Terry some convincing proof for his subsequent pitch to Danielle and Bruce that they are first on the menu when Casaya eventually begins consuming its own. Even more tempting for Danielle was Terry's offer of the Individual Immunity Idol, and safety for the next ten days, if she agreed to swap sides.
The Immunity Challenge was a typical combination of brain teasers, rope bridges, jungle gyms made of bamboo and the clear-felling of a few hectares of rainforest. The first obstacle was a fence they had to dig and drag their way under, which was guaranteed to expose some flesh and give the pixelating machine a workout. Interestingly the final three contestants were the sole remaining members of La Mina, with Terry beating Sally out in the final despite the advantage she had in the crawling-on-all-fours moments with the Jana Pittman socks pulled up like knee pads.
It's Logie week, and the award for teamwork goes to Aras and Courtney for the following exchange in the lead up to Tribal Council:
Courtney: "It's a real simple vote."
Aras: "Yep, Sally."
Courtney: "What?"
Aras: "Yes!"
Courtney: "No way!"
Aras: "You're crazy!"
Cirie proved that she has at least two primary school-aged children through the skill with which she broke up the fight and told Aras to go and play with Shane, while Courtney and Danielle headed off in the opposite direction and continued to say mean things about him and create hope that Danielle might vote for Aras out of sheer spite.
It was good to see the old Shane back at Tribal Council. He raised his eyebrows and pulled shocked faces as Bruce and Danielle made comments indicating a slight discomfort with their place in the pecking order, then boldly declared that he'd be stunned if one member of his alliance flipped sides but it's "impossible" that two would do that. Oh the rods we make for our own backs.
Jeff finally told us this week that if the person with the Individual Immunity Idol is targeted the person with the second highest number of votes is going home. Despite all the careful editing to suggest that Danielle and Bruce had indeed switched sides, Casaya stuck together to vote out Austin and make him the first jury member.
There's a chance that you're reading this after having recently eaten, so I won't tell you too much about the ad for next week's episode other than that it involves Shane and proof that sometimes it's better to simply not show a scene than to try and use enough pixelation to achieve standards of common decency.
No comments:
Post a Comment