Survivor China: weeks 3 & 4

The result for this week’s first episode was given away about three minutes in. When Leslie made the bold statement that "At least if we ever have to go to Tribal Council we don’t have to worry about who will go first because it will be Jean-Robert", you just knew that: a) her tribe would lose the Immunity Challenge; and b) she’d be voted off.

Apparently the two things creeping her out most about Jean-Robert are his silk shirt and his lack of underpants, and oddly I think she’s more worried about the shirt. I’m more worried by his complete lack of logic. James caught a small crab, and Courtney – who seems to have lot of culinary sense despite only weighing about 45kg – made the logical suggestion that the best way to give everyone an equal taste would be to make a crab stock and cook rice in it. Jean-Robert and Aaron poo-pooed the idea, said there was no way of making it feed eight people, but each wanted to share it around somehow, but each wanted to eat the whole thing, but didn’t think James should be allowed to eat the whole thing even though he caught it because that wouldn’t be fair. Denise pointed out that as a school lunch lady she knows nothing about food.

It was - somehow - even more annoying watching Crouching Tiger, where PG and Dave nagged each other incessantly while everyone else watched from the relative safety of their low profiles. PG nags Dave for working too hard around camp, using up all of his energy and then flagging in the challenges, but doesn’t do anything to help him. Dave nags PG to leave him alone, but then keeps right on slaving away and giving her ammunition for the next round.

The challenge was another wrestling one designed to shred the few clothes people still have on after last week. Dave decided to just go nude, which was revolting enough for those directly involved but must have been even worse for the editing guys trying to ensure they’ve pixellated everything.

Crouching Tiger’s girls had easy wins over the chicks from Hidden Dragon, but it was the reverse result for the boys’ rounds. The reward of blankets, pillows and a tarpaulin went to the first team to win three rounds, which was Crouching Tiger by virtue of the producers’ decision to start with the women and make sure they got in at least two rounds of girl-on-girl action. Forgive my cynicism, but after 15 series it’s getting a little predictable.

Crouching Tiger’s win gave them the chance to kidnap someone, and they picked Leslie. I suspect that Jaime was instrumental in the choice, knowing that Leslie would be given a clue to the Hidden Immunity Idol’s location, and being quite ready to remind Leslie of the return favour she owes her. Sure enough, Leslie couldn’t have been more obvious about dragging Jaime away from camp to do the handover.

Leslie found lots of people at Crouching Tiger who openly acknowledge their Christianity, and in their company she was quite happy to declare "My faith is everything!" But she’s not religious. She’s an utter hypocrite, but she’s not religious. Maybe now that she's been voted off and has her suitcase and Bible back she can re-read Matthew 26:69-75.

The immunity challenge was a classic example of cut ropes, collect puzzle pieces and solve puzzle. Courtney was still trying to cut through the first of seven pieces of bamboo each covering a rope by the time Crouching Tiger starting solving the puzzle. Luckily James – who is a dead ringer for the huge black dude in The Green Mile, and seems just as nice – was able to cut through both bamboo and rope in single machete strokes to help his team catch up. They didn’t win, but at least with Dave and Sherea struggling to solve the puzzle for the other side they were still in it with a chance for a while.

The most disturbing thing about the challenge was an utterly jarring decision to slo-mo freeze frame each scene where a person had to do a single horizontal machete cut through the final rope suspending the actual puzzle pieces. This is supposed to be reality TV, not a kung fu movie. The first time I thought maybe our TV was on the fritz, but no. Guys, please stick to the documentary style.

Leslie, who keeps her own religious views to herself because her tribe mates are really cynical, was quite happy to betray the devoted Christians in the other camp when she got home. The word "Judas" comes to mind. She’s so stupid that she bragged about how many friends she’d made over there, which put everyone on notice that she’d be a swing vote come the merge, and sure enough she got voted out at Tribal Council that night. I thought Jeff was pretty clear that the Tribe had spoken, but Leslie just thinks that God was ready for her to go home.

The night’s second episode started with footage of two pandas doing archetypically ‘cute’ panda things. The producers would like us to believe that this occurred somewhere near the tree mail box, but having seen the distance between where Survivor Vanuatu was filmed and the volcano they appeared to be camping on the slopes of (in reality a forty minute flight and two hour drive away) I was sceptical. Sure enough, Survivor is being filmed in north eastern China and pandas are native to the south west. *Sigh*

The tree mail summons to Tribal Council and the promise of food turned out to be misleading and deceptive conduct on a grand scale. It was just a challenge set in the courtyard of the Tribal Council pagoda, with the only food link evident on the night being the huge chopsticks they had to use to move flaming balls around and set off fireworks. Hidden Dragon won a tight competition, and were rewarded with a visit the next day from a family of fishermen. Since their fishing techniques involved equipment neither tribe possess – like trained retriever cormorants with string tied around their necks to stop them from swallowing the fish they catch – it was more a case of giving a man a fish and letting him eat for a day than teaching the man to fish so he can sit in a boat all day and drink beer.

They were also rewarded with the ‘pleasure’ of Dave’s as their kidnap victim company for a few days. At one point he approached James at speed with open arms and had to be warned "Oh man, I told you about the hugging." I’d love to have seen what went before for that to be a sufficient reminder of personal space boundaries.

Todd, knowing full well that Dave had an immunity idol clue that he had to give to someone, wasted no time in befriending Dave while at the same time acknowledging him to be a total nutcase. The third clue was somehow even more cryptic than the first two, but Todd now has more clues than anyone else in the game and seems savvy enough to put his advantage to good use.

The immunity challenge involved dressing up in traditional Chinese armour (the 12th century type, not the heavily-subsidised-by-Russia type) and throwing rocks at the other tribe’s collection of vases (the Reject Shop type, not the priceless-Ming-Dynasty type). The armour weighed more than Courtney, but Hidden Dragon still managed to win.

Back at camp, the prospect of Tribal Council brought out the worst in Dave. Frosti, the youngest player in Survivor History, showed remarkable tact in gently explaining to Dave that to be an effective leader you have to be able to work with everyone you’re leading. The key words there are "work with", not "work for and moan at".

Dave could sense that everyone had enjoyed - and coped quite well during - the time without him, and picked up that nobody was making eye contact. In fact the talk was around whether they were better off with Dave doing all the work around camp but failing in challenges and sending everyone crazy, or Sherea who does great in the challenges but no work at camp. In the end, a new sense of self sufficiency and peace won out, with Dave going home in a unanimous vote. At least he had the sense to blame his tribe mates for not seeing his alleged inner value, instead of thinking God wanted him out of there.