It may not have seemed that way early on, but the theme of tonight's episode ended up being "Brad’s lucky week!"
In fact early on it looked like Nate’s lucky week as he took the opportunity afforded by his kidnapping to learn more about Aitu without giving away too much crucial information about how things are at his own Raro camp. He certainly seemed more interested than anyone else by Jessica / Flicka’s complaints that she was the only one not in on the plan to vote out Cao Boi the previous night at Tribal Council.
Flicka’s complaints were interrupted by the arrival of tree mail, the first word of which was "Swim!" Oddly enough for tree mail that was a pretty good clue as to what the Reward Challenge would involve. The reward itself was also made about a clear as it could be, in the form of a Survivor Tree Mail Order Catalogue of Reward Items and instructions to pick two of them. For Aitu it was an easy and unanimous choice: a sack of potatoes to stretch out the carbs during the week, and some jars of peanut butter for immediate gratification. For Raro, Brad’s suggestion that they make the same choice on the same grounds was ignored in favour of a loaf of bread (which is going to last such a long time in the tropics!) for peanut butter sandwiches RIGHT NOW! None of this "planning for the future" stuff for Adam and Parvarti, huh!
And what did the winners have to do to get these lavish, unbranded and product-placement-free treats? Three members of each tribe had to do a lot of swimming while carrying something awkward, then the other two had to solve a puzzle. Remember those instructions; you’ll hear them again later.
For reasons known only to himself at the time, Brad volunteered to solve the puzzle instead of swimming. During the utter roasting he copped back at camp after they lost, he justified it on the grounds that he has very good spatial skills and is therefore good at puzzles. Trouble is that the "spatial puzzle solving" bit came after the "lots of hard swimming" bit. With Nate unavailable for selection, and Brad’s gloriously buffed pecs on stand-by to do spatial things with some lightweight puzzle pieces, all the physical work was left to Adam, Rebecca and Parvati. Rebecca didn’t even complete the first lap before failing as spectacularly as the supporting materials on her bikini top, giving us the season’s first truly justifiable pixellation.
Aitu’s combination of Ozzy the superfish, Candice the superbabe and Yul the superallroundniceguy finished the swimming part miles in front of Raro, and inevitably they had the challenge wrapped up and won long before Brad’s spatial skills were called upon.
In a nicely ironic twist, the Cook Islands had an unseasonably cold snap not unlike the one Melbourne is going through as I write this (ie it’s two weeks until summer and today we had snow falls down to 600m). Adam spent his night on Exile Island in the foetal position under a make-shift humpy trying to stay warm, while everyone at camp shivered together under every item of clothing and bedding available for use.
I deliberately didn’t write about this last week because I sensed there might be a better story at some point in the future, but the time has now come. Last week during the trip back from the reward there was a short scene of Candice walking along holding hands with Sundra, followed a few seconds later by a shot of Candice sitting between Sundra’s feet. This week Candice shared – nay, initiated – a "peanut butter kiss" with Flicka, whereby they each put a big blob of peanut butter in the middle of their pouts then mashed the two blobs together, then laughed. in another scene she had her arms wrapped around Yul, but that might have just been because she was cold. Or because she was flirting. Or because she was trying to punish Billy on his New Jersey couch by throwing herself at everyone else in camp. Or maybe it’s her strategy? All opinions on this are welcome.
Ozzy’s strategy has been to try and make everyone else too fat to compete during the upcoming individual immunity challenges. Aside from his daily reef-depleting haul of fish he this week caught a live seagull. Apparently a sleeping bird in a bush is worth an extra two days in the game, because everyone seemed pretty happy with dietary variety even if Yul was the only one brave enough to break its neck ready for consumption.
The immunity challenge was almost a direct re-hash of the reward challenge: three members of each tribe had to do a lot of swimming while carrying something awkward, then the other two had to solve a puzzle. Predictably enough, Brad was one of the swimmers this time, although Aitu had won the swim leg and was already started on the puzzle by the time Raro had collected all the pieces. Totally unpredictably, Adam was one of the pair doing the brain-draining puzzle solving part and his team actually came from behind to win! I’m still trying to work out how that happened, but it did. At least I think it did: maybe I fell asleep on the couch and dreamt it. After all, it was ridiculously past my bedtime.
For Brad, of course, it was justification of his theory that skill solving the puzzle can be enough to come from behind and win. If they’d lost he’d have been an absolute goner.
For Aitu, a second consecutive trip to Tribal Council meant a choice between:
- Jessica, whose paranoia about her lack of alliances was getting really annoying;
- Ozzy, whose fantastic efforts to win challenges and feed his tribe have only earned him the gratitude of being considered a future threat; and
- Jonathan, whose constant scheming means nobody trusts him anymore (reinforced by an editorial decision to overlay the sound of Yul’s observation to this effect with footage of a rat feeding on some discarded coconut).
Once again Jessica was left out of everyone else’s decision making, and she was unanimously voted off. Don’t worry Flicka: technically you’re not paranoid if everyone else really is out to get you.
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