Survivor Cook Islands: week 13

I’m going to start this week with a quote from Parvati’s final video message after she was voted out: "I knew I could have worked it more in the hot tub if I wanted to, but I don’t think it would have helped my place in the game." Sure it’s putting the tart before the sauce to begin like that, but it just sums up her Survivor experience so perfectly.

Chronologically speaking the episode began with Adam and Parvati discussing how to stay in the game a bit longer despite the numbers being in favour of the still-solid Aitu alliance. Parvati pointed out that the two of them are in a position of relative weakness and that it would take a lot to achieve the goal of swinging one of the others across. She then went on to develop a strategy of doing this in a way that didn’t make it seem like that person was betraying their alliance, and planned to use lots of charm and smooth talking as her tactics. Adam's contribution was "Those four are tight. We’re gonna need to try something." Oh, and he said "Yeah, exactly!" to all Parvati’s ideas. It was like watching George W Bush at a Pentagon briefing.

This week’s tree mail ‘poem’ started with the line "It’s time to break out your swimwear…", and the rest was so excruciatingly bad that the producers left out whole lines of Yul’s recitation in a too-little-too-late demonstration of remorse. They did, however, quickly flash a glimpse of the paper so that those of us with either a deep susceptibility to subliminal messages – or a VCR, a remote control and no life – were let in on the obscure clue "Shirts will not be allowed" to go with the slightly less cryptic message of a small bucket of mud.

The winner of the reward challenge was the person who could collect the most mud without using their hands, shirts (a ha!) or any other vessel. Basically they had to roll around in a mud pit, go through an obstacle course, scrape the muck off their bodies into a bucket and then go back for more. Most of them collected between 8 and 9kg in the time limit. Parvati was third with 10 kg, and Yul just nudged into second with 10.2kg. Ozzy managed 20kg and genuinely scared the others with the proof of just how good he is regardless of what the challenge involves. The three of them, still covered in mud, got put in a small plane with plastic all over the seats for an overnight stay at a luxury resort. Sundra and Becky went back to camp to stew with increasing bitterness at their misfortune, while Adam spent a couple of days on Exile Island, eating raw shellfish and letting the flies nest in the open wounds on his leg. I’m so glad the show is on late and it’s hours since I’ve eaten.

The reward challenge provided those who wield the pixelating machine with plenty of opportunities to demonstrate their craft. Both Adam and Ozzy found themselves modesty-challenged as the combination of body weight loss and mud weight gain threatened their shorts’ tentative grip on decency. Bikini-clad girls covered in mud and rubbing their hands over their bodies also stretched a PG rating, even though the mud meant nothing was really on show (but then again an odd jewellery choice meant nothing was technically on show during Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, either).

It got even more risque on the challenge reward. Parvati might not have realised that as she showered the mud off her silhouette was clearly visible to the camera crew through the shower door. However, there was no doubt she knew what she was doing as she slithered naked into the hot tub with a nude Yul and Ozzy after a champagne and candlelight dinner. All game-strategy of course. Not auditioning for a photo spread in Ralph magazine when she gets home at all. Nooooo.

While their tactics might be different, both Yul and Parvati are equally focussed on advancing themselves in the game. We already know that Parvati "worked it in the hot tub", with Ozzy quite clearly the main target of her flattery barrage. Yul was so serious in expressing his concern about the potential consequences of her success that he didn’t even realise he’d uttered the single entendre of the series with the line, "If Ozzy responds in some way something might come up."

Maybe it was the food and the comfortable bed, or maybe it was the rejuvenating power of the hot tub, but the immunity challenge was once again Parvati third, Yul second, and Ozzy first by a very large margin. That afternoon both Adam and Parvati separately had the same conversation with puppet-master Yul, acknowledging that one of them would be sent home and asking in the nicest possible way for it to be the other.

Last week after his torch was snuffed, Jonathan said to the remaining Survivors "And I’d like my hat back at some point." Yul, being such an incredibly nice guy, duly returned said hat at Tribal Council this week. Jonathan looked absolutely delighted that Yul had made the effort. He looked somewhat less delighted after Jeff pointed out that it was a clever act on Yul’s part to suck up to a jury member. Who knows whether Yul really was being that political, or whether returning the hat was a genuine favour and he simply felt it was better to agree with the accusation rather than deny it and be accused of lying.

Jeff was just as politically provocative during the rest of Tribal Council, asking Adam whether Parvati’s performance in the hot tub had increased her chances in the game at his expense. Adam mumbled something unintelligible about he and Parvati being mates from early on the game, much to Candice’s horror in the jury box.

Finally it was the predictable 4-2 vote, with Parvati as the loser. In a triumph for multiculturalism, this season’s racial supremacy experiment has left at least one member of each original tribe in the final five. It's a small world after all.

This Friday night - at the entirely reasonable time of 8.30pm - we get the last three hours of Survivor Cook Islands with lots of elimination challenges, the jury interrogation of the two finalists, and presumably the ghastly annual walk down memory lane. Don’t miss it!