Survivor Cook Islands: week 1

And they're racing in the Survivor Cook Islands (incorporating Exile Island) Office Sweep!

By now everyone knows that this season's big twist is that the Caucasians are the token minority, with entire tribes each of African-Americans, Asians and Latinos making up the rest of the extra-large 20 person starting line-up. In an echo of the young/old/male/female division last season we had much soul searching about what this all meant. One of the token white chicks wanted to know if it's "kosher" to segregate that way, proving she can't tell the difference between race and religion.

Billy, one of the Latinos, bragged that they'd have the advantage because "We all come from the Caribbean so we're used to the tropical heat." Yeah, it's real tropical in New York where you're from, Billy.

The African-Americans set out to represent their people and prove that black folks can swim, then promptly drowned in a sea of cliches; "cutting cotton" as a metaphor, indiscriminate use of words like "ghetto" and a really bad Martin Luther King impersonation.

At least the African Americans had several generations living in the same country as a starting point of commonality: the Asian tribe hail from as far north as Korea, as far east as the Philippines and as far south as Vietnam. Cao Boi – and yes it's pronounced Cowboy – is this year's comic relief, observing as they paddled ashore that it's his second time as a boat person. That joke went down a lot better on our couch than it did on his tribe's beach, and one gets the distinct impression that his team are merely tolerating him for now. While 'token minorities strike back' is this year's theme, at 42 he's still the token older person on his tribe. Ah, Hollywood's fickle youth culture.

In scenes reminiscent from Vanuatu (and Pearl Islands and Palau and a couple of other series) the Survivors had to clamber off an old sailing ship with just whatever rations and equipment they could grab in two minutes, then paddle to their respective camps on bamboo rafts. One of the Asian guys had a live chicken that was promptly colonised by Jonathan, a Caucasian guy who already had a chicken anyway. Unfortunately Jessica lifted up the box that both chickens were being kept under and they ran far, far away. Jessica is an amalgam of elements from last season: Sally's Jana Pittman socks, Shane's tattoos and Courtney's wacky hippy dreadlocks and, like, total cluelessness.

On the Asian tribe's beach (and yes they do have proper tribe names but I can't remember them all at this point so please forgive the labels I'm using) Yul had a sinusitis headache. Cao Boi's diagnosis was "Bad Wind" and his cure was a facial massage so vigorous that Yul was left with a prominent bruise between his eyes. Without a mirror the poor guy probably has no idea how bad it was, but comments from his tribemates like "Are you OK?", "It looks like a burn!", and "What the hell did he do to you?" probably gave him some guidance.

The combined reward/immunity challenge paid the first three finishers with flint and the last place getters with a trip to Tribal Council. It was the usual old combination of paddling and puzzle solving, although this time the boat to be paddled was itself one of the puzzles. The African-American team might have been the most united but they were also the most dysfunctional, with half the teams back on the beach before they'd even finished assembling their boat. The final puzzle slowed up the Caucasians enough that it was an exciting finish, but not enough for the African-Americans to get the one third of the immunity idol (which looks remarkably like a souvenir from my parents' 1974 holiday to Fiji) that they needed to avoid tribal council.

Exile Island is back this season, but it's not much more than a sandbar with part of a very fake shipwreck on it. For once it was the losers who got the fun job of sending somebody from one of the winning tribes for two nights of fruitless idol digging. Since none of them know much about the others they picked on Jonathan, who stood out because the Asian tribe had dobbed him in to Jeff for stealing the aforementioned chicken.

It seems that the creative effort which once went into new and original challenges has all been siphoned off into the design of the Tribal Council site. Only they've run out of ideas for that, too, and have just recycled one of the sets from Pirates of the Caribbean VII. As if the racial divisions weren't strong enough, the vote went strictly down gender lines. The three women ganged up on one of the two men, and crowned him with the indignity of being the first voted out. Jeff swapped them Sekou for a flint, which helped them get over his loss remarkably quickly. The explanation for their glee came in Sekou's video piece during the final credits: "My torch may be out, but my fire is still burning." Yep, a flint is definitely more valuable than listening to bargain basement philosophy like that 24/7.