Survivor China: week 6

Survivor has already given me so much, and now it will provide a name for my unborn baby. We’re tossing up between Peih-Gee, Sherea, Janu, Twila and Lisi if it’s a girl, and Frosti, Cao-Boi, Mookie, Bobby John and Yau-Man if it’s a boy. Luckily we’ve got until the end of June to decide.

Enough reality, back to reality TV. At Crouching Tiger, Peih-Gee was still doing the math on the multiple, inter-related "ifs" that all need to align for her cunning plan to work. If they throw the next challenge and if they manage to vote out James and if the merge then happens when there’s ten people, there will be five from each original tribe so the numbers will be balanced if Frosti and Sherea both stay loyal and if they can get one other Hidden Dragon person into their alliance and if one of that six wins individual immunity every week until the end, so she might make it onto the jury. Honey, don’t ever visit Las Vegas because your comprehension of statistical probabilities means you’ll waste a lot of money thinking you’ll win the big jackpot.

The reward challenge was yet another example in a long and tiresome tradition of untying ropes, collecting puzzle pieces and assembling them correctly. This set was hidden in the buildings of an abandoned village (which might have been built and abandoned especially for Survivor). The presence of a camera crew in each room with a puzzle piece made the searching part fairly easy, so it was a narrow win for Hidden Dragon. Maybe PG forgot that it’s the immunity challenges she wants to throw, not the reward challenges.

Anyway, the prize was a visit to the Charmin Tea House. Charmin is an American brand of toilet paper, and the tea house featured two western style loos as well as showers, baths, Crest toothpaste and some shampoos and soaps which had the labels peeled off because apparently nobody wanted to pay the outrageous product placement rates they charge.

Hidden Tiger chose James as their kidnap victim to include in the reward, much to his own delight and even more to Todd’s delight when he convinced James to hand over the immunity idol clue on the promise of saving his life. James is smart enough to acknowledge that Todd is the cornerstone of every alliance in the Hidden Dragon tribe, and since he’s a dead man walking anyway he had nothing to lose.

Todd might be smart, but he and Amanda are both impatient. They were in such a rush to retrieve the brass plaque which is this year’s idol that they did it in full view of the others. Frosti decided to help, so they had to let him in on it (although saying "well I suppose we have to trust him now!" – in front of him – isn’t such a great way to ensure that trust). Then they had to tell James where to get the other one as soon as he got back to Crouching Tiger. Finally, Todd told Denise and Courtney that he’d found it and given it to James.

The plan was for Crouching Tiger to throw the challenge, let them all vote for James and for him to then dramatically reveal the immunity idol, cancelling out all of the votes for him so whoever he’d voted for would be gone. We never actually saw Todd give James the idol he’d found, and we never saw James back at camp after the immunity challenge to see if he searched for the one there, so there’s still a question of whether Todd was being honest – or very clever – telling the others that he’d given his to James.

Like all Survivor plans this one had its share of "ifs", the big one being the assumption that Hidden Tiger would win immunity, especially with James now quite happy to throw the challenge for his own benefit. Turns out that was a mighty big "if". Erik, Jaime and PG had noticed that neither Frosti or Sherea wanted anything to do with them at the reward challenge and decided they needed to win immunity after all. Yeah, because they’ll do so well in a 7-3 merge (assuming that there is a merge, and assuming that it happens when there’s 10 left, and assuming...)

As promised, it was the gross food challenge and it truly was gross. Round One was ten chicken hearts (the poultry type, not the guy who got voted off in week 1, because he had no heart). Subsequent rounds included eels, ‘thousand year old eggs’, baby turtles (including the shell) and our old friend balut (about-to-hatch dead baby chickens minus the shell).

The balut round was Denise versus James. She’s a school lunch lady and should be quite comfortable around inedible ‘food’, but then I guess there’s a big difference between dishing it out and eating it yourself. Even though her tribe had to win to save James, she just couldn’t swallow the feathers. Several looks of utter despair passed between them, before James decided to sacrifice his own safety to spare his darling the horror of having to finish. It would have been incredibly romantic, except for Denise puking up bits of half-chewed beak.

Crouching Tiger’s wholly unexpected win meant the destruction of Todd’s plans and an agonising choice between voting out Sherea based purely on numbers, or Jean-Robert based purely on who they can bear having around a minute longer. The whole thing was edited well enough that we had no idea who was going home until Jeff finished reading out the 5-2 result and snuffed Sherea’s torch. Even Frosti voted for Sherea, sealing his place in the Circle of Trust.

They might regret their decision, though. Next week features pictures of someone holding a meat cleaver by their leg, followed by Jean-Robert telling someone, "If I get screwed I’m gonna hold you responsible", followed by a shot of Todd looking pensive. I think we’re supposed to infer that the three scenes are linked. Oh, and it also had Jeff yelling out "Drop your buffs!" Damn, PG was right!