Survivor Panama - Exile Island: final episodes

Since Channel 9 stuffed up the beginning of this season it's only fitting that they also stuff up the end by sandwiching a repeat – a REPEAT!! - of CSI between the last two episodes and the reunion. At least they had the decency to show the result at the end of the second hour and not leave us hanging with another TO BE CONTINUED...

If the first 14 episodes of Survivor are like a church service, the final night is like Christmas and Easter rolled into one, with some of the regular stuff but lots of special once-a-year extras.

The "previously on Survivor" was a pithy recap of the series so far including many of Shane's 'highlights'. Next we got to find out whether Cirie or Danielle went through to the final following last week's tied vote. They had to compete against each other, with the first to build a fire hot enough to burn through a rope and – of course – raise a flag being declared the winner. Since fire represents life on Survivor it's a better solution to a tied vote than a countback, but to my disappointment it was Danielle whose fire was too big to put out, and Cirie whose torch was therefore snuffed. I've really enjoyed watching Cirie play the game, and if I ever get my hands on a US passport and a spot on the show she's my role model.

Back at camp the one-upmanship between Terry and Aras reached proportions almost as absurd as Danielle's cleavage (which you may have noticed sits in exactly the same spot on her chest whether or not she's wearing a bra: definitely fake). Terry caught more fish, but the three Aras caught were all bigger. And prettier. Terry got out the idol to prove he had it all the way along. They admired how much its hair looks like Shane's.

In a surprise departure from format an extra reward challenge was thrown in, which is what they tried to trick us with on the ad with all that running around. Terry, Aras and Danielle had to solve a couple of puzzles to collect bags of pegs, then use the pegs to rock climb up a steep slope and – of course – raise a flag. Terry came from behind to win a protein- and carbohydrate- rich meal plus a camp stretcher and pillows to get him in peak physical condition for the traditional final three endurance challenge. He also got to look smug, which was probably even more important to him.

Aras and Danielle went back to camp and ate all the fish, so the three of them had full tummies for maximum barfing during the awful walk down memory lane. This year each dearly departed got to voice-over their own montage with what they've learnt about themselves, which spared the three finalists from not having to say anything at all in the many instances where they couldn’t say something nice.

The producers have learnt from the disasters of final three challenges past, and created something that took endurance but also lasted less than an hour. Survivors had to balance on a marine-grade plywood hexagon for 15 minutes without using their hands or feet or falling off. In each round the lily pad was a bit smaller, making it harder to stay upright on. Terry never really got his balance on the third one, while Danielle's lighter body weight and efficient cantilever augmentation made a genuine difference and eventually won her the challenge and the right to choose whom to take to the final two.

Terry and Aras each used a very different style of campaigning on her. Terry went a gentler and more flattering "you do whatever you think is best" approach, while Aras employed flat out guilt and threats. She said she couldn’t make up her mind because she's a Gemini. Whatever.

In the end brute force won out, so Terry had to endure the dual indignities of a) failing to win the only challenge that really counts, and b) losing to not one but two 24-year-olds. The horror, the horror.

Aras started the traditional "burn everything at camp that's not nailed down" the second he and Danielle got back from Tribal Council that night, and created a bonfire of such ferocity that they couldn't sit anywhere near it. The next morning the producers kindly provided a champagne breakfast with eggs and pancakes and, most importantly, champagne. It's a little sad to see them resorting to the Big Brother trick of getting contestants liquored up to make things more interesting, but it paid off when Aras and Danielle went for a walk along the rocks and he slipped, landing not only on his coccyx but a bottle which was almost as smashed as its victim. He needed stitches in both his back and his hand, while Danielle tried to get the emergency medical team to dope him up with something that would last at least through Tribal Council. Hey look at that! Danielle made a joke!

Ah, the final Tribal Council and the climax of the entire series. Shane had finally shaved, but was wearing a hippy caftan that he may well have borrowed from Courtney. In their opening addresses to the Jury, Aras and Danielle both had the usual platitudes coming out of their mouths, but he was subtly holding up his bandaged hand like a hurt puppy and she was not so subtly leaning forward to display her best assets.

It was absolutely no surprise at all that Sally, Austin and Cirie all asked thoughtful and considered questions, while Bruce, Terry, Courtney and Shane used the flickering embers of their 15 minutes to embarrass themselves again. In a stale trick, Shane asked each of them to pick a number between one and a million. Aras said "four" and Danielle said "ten", both of which were safe bets since Shane was unlikely to choose a number where he'd have to actually calculate who was closer, and he possibly can't count past twenty at any rate.

Following the vote, Jeff headed off into the undergrowth and emerged in front of the live studio audience in New York for a finale which was filmed live all those weeks ago and we only get to see now that half of us have accidentally heard who won. With Danielle only able to score votes from Bruce and Cirie the million dollars goes to Aras, along with some very timely advice to him to pay his taxes.

Jeff used the one hour break during CSI to change out of his Steve Irwin costume and into a natty baby blue sweater and black pant combo. Danielle was also dressed out of character, in a jacket over a ruffled shirt that showed no flesh at all. Either she's embarrassed by the way she was portrayed on the show, or there's a non-disclosure clause in the contract for a bikini shoot she's bound to have signed with a lads' mag. Yeah I'm being harsh, but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt that it's not Penthouse.

Aras might have won the official prize, but Cirie was the real winner. Her fellow Survivors all respect her so much more after watching the show and learning of her behind-the-scenes puppetry that Terry had a fishing trophy for her. Better still, Jeff had the keys to a GMC Yukon based on the outcome of a viewer poll for favourite. You go girl!

Shane also starred, with much conversation about his "rubber room" moments, his extreme quit smoking campaign, and the fact that Boston does have a mother whose name is "Bird". Nobody mentioned the weird schoolboy outfit he'd chosen to wear to the reunion, although perhaps that was implicitly covered in the "rubber room" segment.

We got to find out more about the death of Tina's son just before she was due to appear on Survivor Guatemala, and Austin explained how one wet and miserable night stuck on Exile Island with Danielle made him rediscover his religion. Those in the back row each got a token 25 words or less in which to describe what we didn't get to see of them on the show, and as soon as that was mercifully over we had the seriously exciting preview for Survivor Cook Islands.

Again, it has been my great pleasure to inflict my obsession on you all, and congratulations to the winners of all the office sweeps. Now grab your torches and head back to camp.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 14

TO BE CONTINUED…

One of the ugliest phrases on TV, and one I never thought Survivor's producers would ever stoop to utter. That's right: nobody got voted off last night!!

For an atheist I actually quite enjoy a good church service. The ritual and recitation of familiar phrases can be incredibly soothing, with a sermon, a few readings and a couple of hymns (but only from a prescribed list) providing variety. I've always believed that's part of Survivor's success in appealing to something deep within us all: the ceremonial ratio of ritual and scheduled spontaneity. If you don't believe me, how about this for an order of service:
1. Review of previous week's episode
2. Opening credits
3. This week's scenes of life around camp
4. Reward challenge, where Father Jeff is guaranteed to utter every one of the following lines:

• C'mon in guys!
• You guys ready for today's challenge?
• Wanna know what you're playing for?
• Worth playing for?
• We'll draw for spots/teams and get started
• Survivors GO!
• [Name] wins reward!

5. Scenes from back at camp after the challenge
6. Immunity Challenge (including many of the lines above)
7. Scenes back at camp as Survivors negotiate who to vote for
8. Tribal Council, where Father Jeff is guaranteed to utter every one of the following lines [this is the late-season version: delete references to immunity and jury in episodes 1-8 inclusive]:

• I'll now bring in the members of our Jury;
• OK, let's get to the vote.
• [Name of person with immunity] is the only person you cannot vote for.
• OK it's time to vote. [Name of person sitting bottom left of screen]: you're up.
• I'll go tally the votes
• Once the votes are read the decision is final. The person voted out will be asked to leave the Tribal Council area immediately.
• I'll read out the votes. [In final episode, substitute "I’ll read out the vote"]
• The [nth] person voted out of Survivor is …

There is no TO BE CONTINUED!

I've had my say now so I'll pipe down and fill in this week's variables, but before I do can I just point out that in the review of last week's episode we got a montage of Shane hugging and kissing his son during the loved ones' visit. Either he needs to cut the apron strings a bit, or his son is also a chain smoker and his clothes and skin are impregnated with nicotine, because the similarities between the way Shane handled Boston, and the way he handled that ciggie he scabbed off a villager in episode seven, were disturbingly similar.

I think something must have happened to Terry when he was 24. That's how old both Aras and Danielle are, and he keeps going on and on and on about how 24 year olds are supposed to behave. This week he declared that he didn't come here to make friends with 24 year olds, and last week saw his sermon about how seeing your mom doesn't matter to a 24 year old. Apparently he doesn't want to make friends with 35 year olds either, because Cirie copped a serve for leaving her torch in his path. Grumpy 46 year old man or what!

The reward challenge involved running around counting rocks, poles, shells, dead fish and some very much live-and-moving crabs and iguanas. The counts then provided the combinations for three padlocks, which had to be opened to release a winning flag. The added complication was that Survivors were clipped to ropes and had to navigate past each other. Terry did pretty well considering everyone else actively ganged up on him, plus he apparently missed hearing one of the rules and did more work than he had to. Lots of people think Terry's a bit of a hero, but when complaining to Jeff about it he sounded like a sook and a dobber and a bad loser to me.

Aras won an overnight trip through the Panama Canal on a massive motor yacht and took Cirie with him. The food, shower and sleep in a decent bed helped his physical performance in the immunity challenge two days later, but too late to stop him from clumsily making a toast with her to "the final three". "Don't you mean the final two?" "Yeah, yeah, the final two!" That's OK Aras; I'd also be more confident of beating Danielle than Cirie in the final two.

His other mistake was to ask Terry if he was going to "say something bad about women" when calling him a sore loser at the end of the reward challenge. Two days, a stint on Exile Island with Danielle and the Immunity Challenge later, Terry was still seething over it. He told Aras he had to apologise before they could negotiate any kind of truce, and Aras made such an abject and entirely sincere apology that it took Terry by enough surprise to leave him silent and not knowing quite what to say next. Go Aras!

The Immunity Challenge involved yet more digging in sand for a bag. These ones contained puzzle pieces, with each completed puzzle providing the coordinates for the next bag. For once somebody other than Terry won, so it was Immunity Idol - Terry and Immunity Necklace - Aras leading into Tribal Council.

Of course, first we had to go through the drama of the producers trying to confuse us about who everyone was planning to vote for. Danielle's time on Exile Island with Terry had included him showing her the idol in his ongoing desperation to form an alliance, and led to her declaring – without the slightest hint of irony – " It's 100%, and I know that he's possibly going to let me use it."

Both Aras and Terry spent the afternoon coaching Cirie and Danielle respectively in the art of fire lighting, ready for a tied-vote showdown and a competition to decide who would go home. At Tribal Council Jeff pointed out the neat coincidence that one member of each of the young/old/male/female tribes had made it to the final four. Judging by the dramatic eye rolls and tongue poking, Shane has obviously updated Courtney that Danielle had voted her out. Shane himself looks somehow even more unkempt than he did back at camp, and has apparently forgotten a) how to do up his shirt, and b) that it's inappropriate to wear a beanie in an equatorial country. He's not even slightly fly for a white guy.

And that was it. Terry hadn't shared the Immunity Idol with Danielle, and while Jeff was very clear that it's now out of play he didn't let on whether or not Terry gets to keep it. Cirie and Danielle got two votes each and were sent to sit behind two conveniently ready arson kits when suddenly those words, which I shall not repeat, flashed up on screen.

Next week is the big finale when we find out who goes through to the final three and who ultimately wins the million dollars. In an additional break from tradition it looks like the final challenge involves running instead of just who-can-stand-still-the-longest. If they're going to tamper with the formula, please – PLEASE - let them also get rid of that ghastly stroll down memory lane.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 13

Here's just a small selection of the incorrect statements Shane made this week:

• To Cirie: " Me, you and Aras have the numbers now."
• To camera: "There's five of us left now. Danielle goes next, and then we're in the final four."
• To the rest of the tribe: "I'm so glad that chick [Courtney] is gone. It couldn't have happened to a loopier broad." (OK well that's technically true, but only because Shane – while undeniably loopier than Courtney – is biologically male, as confirmed by Cirie's medical examination of what's in his perma-moist underpants).
• To Terry: "Danielle's depressed because she knows she's next." And later, "I'd like to see you and me in the final two."
• To Cirie: "You, Danielle and Aras aren't dicking me: correct!? OK I fell pretty good. We're good to the three."
• To camera: "I'm in a great space. I've set myself up so that I'm safe, and I feel like at this point I could beat anybody."
• To Jeff at Tribal Council: "I've not lied to anyone. I've not cheated anyone. My integrity is 100% intact."

Other stuff happened this week, too. For a start we had the reward and immunity challenges, where Shane comes last as often as Terry wins. The reward challenge involved bits of previous challenges, starting with the one where Survivors had to dig up a pillow buried in the sand beneath a hexagon. The first four over a finish line went through to the next round: Shane didn't. Next they had to untie one of the big timber snakes from week 2 and carry it and the bag over a finish line. That knocked Cirie out, so only Aras, Danielle and of course Terry competed in the leg to untie a huge fish from the middle of a pond and carry it, the bag and the snake over a finish line. Running out of hands, Terry actually carried the fish by the tail in his mouth. Maybe nobody told him it wasn't the gross food challenge (which seems to have peaked and expired with the Balut in Palau). Finally Terry and Aras had to carry the bag, the snake and the fish through a maze of tunnels and towers, and still be willing to kiss their loved ones at the end.

Yes, the loved ones were there in person. Terry's reward was that he got to decide how to share out the love, but it was more about sharing out the punishment for those he thinks are working hardest against him. Aras was allowed to at least hug his mom, but Danielle and her mom only got to wave and call out inanities to each other before Danielle was sent to Exile Island for a few days. Cirie, who really is cruising under the radar, got to take her husband back to camp for a night of outdoor horror and slavery. Terry naturally took his wife on the conjugal visit, and invited Shane and his son Boston to also share in the overnight stay at a two-bedroom villa with a very well stocked fridge.

Boston has clearly inherited his father's tiny attention span. Well, either that or he was actually listening to Shane's minute-by-minute description of the previous 33 days and was just bored. Either is possible. What was absolutely indisputable is that he's inherited his father's knack for being vastly wrong: "I think my dad's doing really well in the game, 'cause he knows how to play the game and he's really smart and athletic." Fortunately we were spared their farewell, although we did have to sit through a whole lot of jokes about the sleep to 'snuggling' ratio Terry and his wife managed for the night.

Cirie's husband is even more of a city slicker than she is, if that's possible. How else can we explain his duck and cover reaction to the sound of a stick cracking in the fire. There's not too many cars at camp from which to commit a drive-by. After recoiling in horror at the level of suspended particulate in their drinking water ("What are you gonna do with that; drink it? I thought that was the basin y'all washed your feet in!") he spent the rest of the time hauling the stuff back to camp, as well as gathering firewood, scaling fish and not complaining about it too much.

The TV guide description for this week read "A fight between two castaways leads one to learn something important about the other." Aras learned that Terry thinks a wife's love is more important than a mom's. Aras pointed out that his mom is his 'rock' in the absence of a wife. They both got defensive and glared at each other over the fire. Cirie sat and watched, absorbed everything and said nothing, as she usually does. Hardly a fight, and she did all the learning.

The immunity challenge put each Survivor on top of a twenty foot high pole out at sea, trying to use a bucket on a rope to pour enough water in a tube to raise a flag. Shane came last and Terry won, but then Shane had completely misunderstood the instructions and was pouring water into the wrong hole.

With the immunity bauble around his neck yet again and the individual immunity idol in his bag, Terry is now guaranteed a place in the final three. Either the others still don't believe he's got the idol or they haven't done the math, but there is still absolute certainty in the mind of each person that their own alliance will make up the final three, and since most of those alliances don't include Terry someone is about to be rather disappointed.

As a contrast to Shane's rubbish, Aras made one of the most accurate statements ever heard at Tribal Council when asked about Terry's unchallenged ownership of the immunity necklace: "The challenges are just one part of the game. You can win all the challenges you want, but if you don't win the people over you don't win the million dollars."

As you probably guessed by now, Shane won't be winning anything. It was hard to tell whose face betrayed the most emotion: Shane's shock at being voted out, Captain Terry's fury that the crew disobeyed him yet again, or Courtney's realisation that she's now sequestered in the jury's hotel with Shane.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 12

It's almost impossible to underestimate Shane's impact on the entertainment value of this season. This week he found a piece of driftwood in the shape of a Blackberry. He sat on his 'Thinking Rock', 'sending text messages' and 'checking for email' and generally looking rather pleased with himself; "I'm communicating with people not on this island!" L Ron Hubbard might not be on the island, but the men in white who took Bruce away will be back soon.

This week's reward challenge was held in two parts, neither of which was the least bit original. What has been new is the number of reward challenges being played out in teams so late in the season. Survivors were clipped by the waist to a rope, which in turn was tangled around various obstacles (including the big hexagonal frames of marine-grade plywood left over from the Triominoes challenge a few weeks ago). Terry, Danielle and Courtney easily won, because Aras and Shane had to spend so much time hauling Cirie over and under the barricades.

With the losers out of the way, Jeff announced that the reward of a barbecue and chocolate cake on a private beach was stowed in the boot (sorry, trunk) of a car (sorry, GMC Yukon) which would soon be owned by Terry (sorry, the winner of phase 2). Jeff had a choice of people to throw the keys to, but cleverly he picked the girl with the nicest cleavage against which to display them for a gratuitous close-up shot. Danielle, Terry and Courtney had to use slingshots and marbles to break three tiles, with the winner getting the car (sorry, GMC Yukon). Gee, big surprise, Terry won and we were treated to forty seconds of careful camera work to show off the car (sorry, GMC Yukon) from every conceivable angle that could include a badge. Don't look so happy, Terry: the person who wins the car had never yet won the series.

With Aras on Exile Island, Cirie and Shane were left alone at camp. After some half-hearted strategy talk she decided to go fishing with live snails as bait, presumably because if she had to spend time with something slimy it may as well be something slimy and sane. Believe it or not, the girl voted last week as "least able to cope in the wild alone" caught the biggest and most edible-looking fish since the one that Tina found 'washed up on the rocks' in week 1. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that we only got one fleeting view of the water. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that a close-up of her stupendous bosom overwhelmed our attention as she 'hooked' the fish. Perhaps there was a scuba diver hiding in the water waiting to set her up. We'll never know.

Her contagious excitement lasted all the way through to Jeff's announcement that the immunity challenge would have each Survivor trying to hold their own body weight. In one of the most mechanically complex challenges ever, each person had to kneel on a long plank suspended over a pit of water, holding on to two ropes connected by a network of pulleys to a hook suspended above another platform on the other side of the pit. Hanging from the hook were sandbags, initially equivalent to 20% of each person's own body weight and increasing by 10% every 15 minutes. When the weight became too much the ropes slipped from their hands, the platform fell and they were catapulted into the water. First Triominoes, now Mousetrap.

Failing at the 13 minute mark, Shane didn't even last to the first weight gain. Cirie made a respectable 18 minutes, while Danielle's 19 minute effort gave us plenty of time to inspect what was surely more than a mere 30 days' worth of armpit hair growth. I wonder why we never noticed that before? Courtney and Terry both made it past the 30 minute mark before Terry won his immunity necklace back and the infighting began to decide which one of their own Casaya were going to vote out.

Terry, Danielle and Courtney had formed a strategy during their beach barbecue. It apparently involved Cirie as fourth place, but she had her own idea of an alliance with Danielle and Aras. Shane wanted to vote out Danielle, and everyone else pretended to just go along with that in case he used his Blackberry to send a barrage of abusive emails and text messages.

Actually Shane did say one sane thing this week, although it was right at the start in the recap from the previous episode so it doesn't really count. "Courtney is a dream to take to the final two. Anyone could win against her. Anyone!" Yes Shane, even you. With six people left it was surprising to see how much the focus was on the make up of the final two and not who to get rid of in the meantime. Danielle seemed to have a lot of trouble working out who she was actually voting for compared to who she was supposed to pretend she was voting for. I had just as much trouble keeping up with it all, so I was planning to cut her some slack until she announced at Tribal Council "My brain is, like, about to explode!"

In a very unusual move we got to see how four out of the six voted before Jeff did, and it was an utterly fragmented result. Aras and Danielle, Cirie's buddies from the spa reward last week, both received votes but the three of them stuck together to get rid of Courtney. Shane, who still mistakenly believes that he's the one controlling the game, was almost as shocked as she was. Like, I'm, like, so not going to miss her, like, at all.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 11

One of the classic elements of the Survivor visual 'style' is the shots of the local wildlife going about its life in blissful oblivion. This week we had various scavenging creatures, including flies and a vulture, feasting on the rubbish left around camp and quite possibly the remains of Shane's dignity.

Aside from some footage of Terry complaining about his treatment by, and gloating at the merest hints of discord among, Casaya (neither of which was particularly attractive) it was almost straight into tree mail this week. Each Survivor had a large straw voodoo doll, which they had to dress up in their own images. Cirie stuffed the bra on her doll but had the padding up a little too high on the chest to be a true representation. Shane presumably wet the groin on his, and Bruce packed his to bursting point to represent the 12 days of constipation taking its toll on him. More – so very much more – on that later.

At the reward challenge, Survivors had to fill in a quiz about their fellow castaways. Jeff tallied the votes, then read out each question one by one and asked Survivors to show not who they nominated but who they believe most others would have nominated. Getting the correct answer provided the chance to put another person out of the game by cutting through ropes to set fire to their voodoo doll.

This type of challenge is fairly common at this point in the game, because it clearly highlights the alliances and grievances being otherwise hidden. As a clue, the correct answer to all of the following questions was "Courtney":

1. Who never shuts up?
2. Who is the biggest poseur?
3. Who is the most annoying person out here?

Shane totally missed the meaning behind being voted the person "who mistakenly believes they are running this game", thinking instead that he was being named the person actually running this game. He also missed the fact that it is a game, and took immense umbrage at each person who cut one of his ropes.

Cirie was the surprise under-the-radar winner. She elected to send Terry to Exile Island (giving him even more to sook about on top of being the first one ousted) and took Aras and Danielle with her on the reward of a helicopter flight to a resort with food, beds, masseurs, showers and most importantly a washing machine. She picked those two as the people she'd be likely to have most fun with, which was undeniably accurate given that Shane and Courtney were still upset about the game result, Terry was fuming by himself on Exile Island, and Bruce was doubled over with the pain of his blocked-up bowels.

By the afternoon Bruce was curled up in the foetal position, moaning. The reward winners were also moaning, but more with the pleasure of their mud massages and full bellies. Danielle confirmed my observation of sexual tension between Courtney and Shane, claiming "she has a major crush on him", and they all agreed that Bruce would be suffering stuck in the middle of the fights the two of them would be having.

Bruce was indeed suffering. Courtney asked "If I sing you a song will it help?" His"NO!!!" was very clear but she did it anyway (and to think she wonders why she was voted most annoying). In the end the medical team was summonsed, as much to rescue Bruce from Courtney as anything else. Personally I'd have dived face-first into the fire to get medivaced out rather than confess to an international TV audience of millions that I allowed a life-threatening case of constipation to develop.

If I were Shane I would probably have used the time between the medical team being called and their arrival to put on some pants. Or I could have used the twenty or so minutes after they arrived, but before they asked me to help with the stretcher, to put on some pants. He's right that it's a bad idea to sleep in wet pants. He's wrong to think that anyone else wants to see his naked form, particularly when he looks so much like Mr Burns stepping out of the shower in that episode of The Simpsons where Marge takes up painting. Maybe he was hoping for a second opinion about his nappy rash.

Anyway Bruce got taken off to hospital, presumably for at least one enema, and Courtney and Shane were left alone to snipe at each other and make alternating pledges of loyalty and death threats. By the time the others all returned to the beach the two of them were yet again worked up about being told they're annoying and moody and no fun to take on a reward challenge, and merely reinforced that opinion.

Poor Cirie had to suck up to Shane and convince him that she's absolutely true to their threesome with Aras, which makes them very strange bedfellows indeed remembering that only a couple of weeks before Shane and Aras told Cirie she'd be next voted off, and Shane has already voted for Aras at least once.

Eventually Jeff arrived to tell them all that Bruce is in hospital and out of the game. While there was no Tribal Council this week, the question now is whether his course of intensive colonic irrigation will be complete in time for him to rejoin the jury. We'll need to wait and see whether he is allowed to miss a Tribal Council and still vote at the end, or what happens if he's gone for good and the vote is tied? Sadly the rest of the world already knows since the final went to air in the US a week ago, but the remaining five episodes will still be exciting for some of us.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 10

This week's episode had it all: exciting challenges, political intrigues and a medical emergency. Before you continue reading, just remember that last week you were warned of something deeply unpleasant requiring extensive pixelation (although perhaps not as extensive as he'd like to think he needs), and that it involves the baring of Shane's nether regions. And for once that doesn't mean Shane Warne.

Terry made another bold move this week by asking the remaining Casaya men where they saw him in the final six. Their blunt response of "We don't!" seemed to provoke him into telling all his Top Gun stories in one go while he still had an audience. Courtney the peacenik hippy was less than impressed, asking "How is any normal American person supposed to be the Navy air fighter pilot dude?" She must have missed the step-by-step description of what training he did at which bases. Sally listened in rapt attention and laughed in the right spots, since Terry winning reward and giving her the idol was clearly her only chance at coming home from the next Tribal Council.

The reward challenge was one of my annual favourites with the videos from home. In a clever move they showed each Survivor a 10 second sample clip so we at home got to check out all of the families instead of just the winners. Terry and Sally get my vote for having the cutest dogs out of the many that featured. Courtney's family all have little finger motions to show their love for each other, which had to be explained. Terry's daughter was like Drew Barrymore in E.T., while Aras's dad was riding a bike around the tee-pee set up in their back yard, which also had to be explained.

Remember how Sally told Austin a few weeks back that her family shunned her because she's divorced? She must have had some explaining to do after that episode went to air, because their waving and smiling and calling out "We love you, Sal!" was pretty convincing if it was an act. Unless, of course, they're not her real family…

Shane sobbed uncontrollably from the moment the reward was announced. His son looks like a real brat and his dog is kind of ugly. Even the mere existence of Boston's mother had conspicuously never been referred to on camera, but perhaps Shane gave us the reason when explaining why his son means so much to him. "I was only 21 when I had him. We grew up together. He's my brother. He is my son." The only interpretation of that which makes literal sense is too Oedipal to even contemplate.

The challenge itself put one person on a cradle hanging from a bungy cord in the middle of a large frame. The other three members of their randomly-chosen team had to use ropes to pull the cradled person around to collect numbered flags in order and slot them in a row. It was really, really close until Aras forced his team to back track when he knocked one of the already pegged flags out of its hole, and then made the same mistake again. It was enough for Courtney's team of Sally, Terry and Bruce to win and all let go of their ropes at the same time, violently retracting the bungy cord up and almost catapulting her over the jungle.

OK, this is the medical emergency and the bit I warned you about. It's probably best described in the participant's own words.
Shane: "I have an issue with my penis."
Cirie: "Can you explain it to me or do I have to come look at it?"
Shane: "You're a nurse!"
Cirie: "I don't want to look at it!"
Danielle: "I wouldn’t either!"
Shane (pants around ankles): "Don't laugh!"
Cirie (to camera, laughing): "Shane has this... funky... thing goin' on with his... uh... testicles."
Shane: "Why is it like that? You see how it's all red?"
Cirie (doubled over laughing): "That's because it's moist all the time. It's like diaper rash."
Shane: "Is that because I've been wearing those undies for 23 days?"
Cirie: (crying with laughter)
Shane (slightly desperate now): "How do I make that go away?"
Cirie: "Can you dry it out?"

Fortunately for Shane, Courtney and co soon arrived back from the video lounge with their luxury items having been returned to them as an extra treat. I don't think we've seen the Survivors' luxury items for the last seven or eight series, so it came as something of a shock to know they'd even been encouraged to bring something out to Panama in their bags. Bruce had a sketch pad, Sally had a journal, Terry had a queen doona sized American flag, and Courtney had her fire dancing equipment. If Shane is smart – and careful – he may have found a way to "dry it out". Interestingly none of the others bothered to ask why he was wearing his t-shirt as a skirt.

Aras proved yet again what a total tool he is. First he asked the girls to send him to Exile Island so he could look for the immunity idol. When he actually was sent he claimed Terry arranged it because he feels threatened. Once on the island he couldn't understand the clues, so he blamed his failure on everyone else already having turned over all the rocks, and eventually gave up because "Terry's probably already found it". Back at camp he explained his empty hands with a complaint that the clues are really hard, and the non-sequitur that "either the clue was really easy and Terry found it straight away, or no one's got it."

The Immunity Challenge provided yet another twist. Survivors got the choice between participating and eating, and everyone from Casaya except Aras chose the cheeseburgers. He looked pretty angry lining up next to Sally and Terry for the memory puzzle while everyone else squeezed around the table to cram in as much as they could before Terry won yet again and they had to stop.

Back at camp in the frantic hours before Tribal Council, Terry and Sally tried to convince everyone that he'd given her the idol so that neither of them could be voted off and whomever they themselves voted for would be going home. Terry even showed Bruce the idol in its roof-cavity hiding place (not in his bag where Danielle went snooping for it). Bruce once again looked like he'd been swayed until Cirie pointed out that Terry would be making the biggest mistake in Survivor history if he gave up the idol because he'd then be forced to win every single immunity challenge to make it through.

Sure enough, the vote went against Sally. There was an incredibly tense moment as Jeff asked if she had the idol, and every head snapped around to see what she'd do. Noticeably, Terry just looked at the ground so we knew he hadn't shared after all.

As Jeff pointed out, it's now six members of Casaya against Terry, and it'll be fun to see if he manages to keep winning the immunity challenges. Just not as much fun as watching Cirie trying to avoid any further medical consultations with Shane.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 9

Maybe they were struck by lightning, but somehow this week Shane and Aras swapped personalities, or at very least transferred ownership of a bossy, arrogant streak. Shane was subdued and well behaved, while Aras indulged in such grown-up observations as, "These snails are like La Mina: slimy and hard to get out!"

He was specifically referring to Austin, who'd woken to the stunning realisation that he'd made a huge mistake at Tribal Council the night. Apparently he confessed to faking weakness in the challenge based on the incorrect assumptions that he was about to voted out and would somehow save face by proving he's not weak after all. He was wrong on both counts, but absolutely right in guessing that perhaps the others don't trust him much any more.

I've often described the tree mails as 'crappy', and this week I'd like to tender in evidence the following words painted onto the side of a coconut:

Skill can win a boat race,
And making tough decisions takes some guts
But in political battles,
You'll always deal with nuts.

No, it wasn't a reference to Budget Night, although that's what we were missing by watching Survivor instead of the ABC tonight.

The challenge separated the nine remaining contestants into teams of three competing against each other for a prize of breakfast in bed the next day. Each team had 100 coconuts, which they had to deposit in the boats belonging to the other two teams. Once finished they had to row their own boat out to a buoy (and it's frustrating me no end that we're up to episode 9 and Jeff still hasn't said the word boo-eee), collect a flag and a fishing net, and get all the coconuts out of their boat and back to the starting point.

The politics came in deciding whose boat to put the coconuts in, since more coconuts made the boat harder to row and the unpacking bit at the end take longer. Danielle and Aras were on different teams, but that didn’t stop him from instructing her to focus on the trio with two La Mina members – including Austin - to make them lose. Danielle was having trouble carrying anything else large and round at chest height, so it was no surprise that she, Courtney and Cirie came utterly last.

More politicking ensued when the victor's right to send a loser to Exile Island was doubled to one member of each non-winning team. Aras, well and truly in Shane mode, simply told the others that he would decide and picked Austin (no brainer) and Danielle (big surprise).

The reward for Sally, Bruce and Aras was defined as "breakfast in bed". No guarantees were made that the bed would be warm and dry. In pouring rain (which in an earlier scene had sent a lonely coconut floating across the frequent lake upon which Casaya built their camp), they climbed under the sodden blankets and tucked into rolls, toast, coffee, juice and a lot of bacon, which made it all OK again.

Just as cold and sodden, but nowhere near as well fed, were Danielle and Austin on Exile Island. Austin also has a mistaken belief that "hell" is an appropriate analogy for cold, but didn't seem to mind snuggling up to Danielle for warmth, companionship and a possible addition to La Mina's voting bloc.

Terry, meanwhile, was also doing his best for the team. He knew that success depended on finding out who occupies the bottom two rungs of the Casaya pecking order and proving it to them in the hope of creating a new five-person alliance. He also knew that it would be tough to get reliable information but seemed to be relishing the challenge, so it must have been a little disappointing for him when Shane simply coughed up the information without blinking. Shane obviously wasn't listening at the start of the episode when Aras told everyone they had to be really careful not to give any information away.

Not only did Shane answer Terry's question about who would be in the final four, he bet twenty bucks on it, giving Terry some convincing proof for his subsequent pitch to Danielle and Bruce that they are first on the menu when Casaya eventually begins consuming its own. Even more tempting for Danielle was Terry's offer of the Individual Immunity Idol, and safety for the next ten days, if she agreed to swap sides.

The Immunity Challenge was a typical combination of brain teasers, rope bridges, jungle gyms made of bamboo and the clear-felling of a few hectares of rainforest. The first obstacle was a fence they had to dig and drag their way under, which was guaranteed to expose some flesh and give the pixelating machine a workout. Interestingly the final three contestants were the sole remaining members of La Mina, with Terry beating Sally out in the final despite the advantage she had in the crawling-on-all-fours moments with the Jana Pittman socks pulled up like knee pads.

It's Logie week, and the award for teamwork goes to Aras and Courtney for the following exchange in the lead up to Tribal Council:

Courtney: "It's a real simple vote."
Aras: "Yep, Sally."
Courtney: "What?"
Aras: "Yes!"
Courtney: "No way!"
Aras: "You're crazy!"

Cirie proved that she has at least two primary school-aged children through the skill with which she broke up the fight and told Aras to go and play with Shane, while Courtney and Danielle headed off in the opposite direction and continued to say mean things about him and create hope that Danielle might vote for Aras out of sheer spite.

It was good to see the old Shane back at Tribal Council. He raised his eyebrows and pulled shocked faces as Bruce and Danielle made comments indicating a slight discomfort with their place in the pecking order, then boldly declared that he'd be stunned if one member of his alliance flipped sides but it's "impossible" that two would do that. Oh the rods we make for our own backs.

Jeff finally told us this week that if the person with the Individual Immunity Idol is targeted the person with the second highest number of votes is going home. Despite all the careful editing to suggest that Danielle and Bruce had indeed switched sides, Casaya stuck together to vote out Austin and make him the first jury member.

There's a chance that you're reading this after having recently eaten, so I won't tell you too much about the ad for next week's episode other than that it involves Shane and proof that sometimes it's better to simply not show a scene than to try and use enough pixelation to achieve standards of common decency.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 8

The sexual tension between Courtney and Shane reached marital status tonight with an entirely conjugal fight over who had more than their fair share of the doona. Here’s a quote from Courtney about how cold it was in the shelter without blankets; "Like, just no warmth. I mean it was, like, seriously hell." You heard it here first folks: hell has frozen over.

In describing her cold night in hell, Courtney used the word "like" twelve times in a single minute, only one of which was an appropriate context. She, like, uses the word "like" as often as Judd in Guatemala used the word "man", man.

Sally, meanwhile, was oblivious to the cold in her happy place on Exile Island, safe from the vote at the previous night's Tribal Council. She did a little half-hearted digging for the Individual Immunity Idol and seemed very relieved to be dropped off by the production crew not at the La Mina beach but the Casaya beach, which is now home to everyone. Instead of the traditional "Drop your buffs" command from Jeff at a challenge, a crappy tree mail 'poem' had announced to Terry, Nick and Austin the much-anticipated merge. One tradition that remained, however, was the merge banquet. Casaya must have forgotten about it because they gallantly ate as much rice as they could once the boys appeared on the horizon, leaving little room for seconds.

Another tradition at merge time is coming up with a tribe name and painting a new banner. It's usually a group activity, but Bruce the art teacher (is there anything this guy hasn't taught?) took the initiative and actually did a really good job of it. The new name – Gitanos – is Spanish for gypsy. No points for, like, guessing who, like, came up with that one.

Actually there is something that Bruce probably hasn't taught: workplace safety. If you're going to cut a piece of rope by rubbing it on a machete, do it with the blade facing away from you. Nick, are you listening? Otherwise, when the rope cuts through, the blade will swing up and hit someone in the face. Bruce, pay attention! Oh, that's right, you're trying to find that piece of tooth Nick just knocked out of your mouth. Of course, if Bruce hadn't blunted the machete by using it to clean all the seaweed off his Zen rock garden every morning it might have been sharper, with less force required to cut the rope and fewer subsequent facial injuries. Karma in the Zen garden, huh.

The machete wasn't the only thing to go to Bruce's head this week. As soon as it became clear that the merge was imminent, Shane had gathered Casaya and notified them all that they are once again in an alliance, and that they must stick together. (Three days ago he pleaded to get out of an alliance with these same people, but don't worry about that.) Shane and Aras knew that Bruce was the most likely swing voter, but they waited until La Mina was ashore and Terry had started sucking up to Bruce to do likewise in the hopes of winning his allegiance.

What Bruce forgot was that he's only one of six potential swing voters, with Shane and Cirie also subjected to Terry's rough wooing. Since Terry could only offer a maximum of two weeks' safety at Tribal Council, plus the risk of joining the losing side, it wasn't a particularly attractive offer to anyone. And naturally, Shane was utterly graceless in his rejection of it.

The first individual immunity challenge was a straightforward stamina trial to hang from a horizontal pole, sloth-like. Cirie was first to fall, followed by most of her cocky Casaya tribe mates. The final three were the La Mina men, all of whom desperately needed immunity. Austin was the first of them to go, with Terry eventually beating Nick. We may as well just hand Terry the million bucks right now, since any time he doesn't win individual immunity he's got the idol as back up.

This week's prize for stupidity - from an incredibly strong field - goes to Austin. In his little private piece to camera before Tribal Council he confessed to having 'faked' weakness at the challenge so that Casaya didn't see him as a threat and vote him off. As strategies go that's pretty smart. Caving in at Tribal Council to a grilling from Jeff that wouldn't melt ice, and confessing your strategy to everyone, is not. When Courtney and Danielle are shaking their heads at your stupidity it's time to consider whether you really want to show your face in public ever again.

Bruce's facial expressions during Tribal Council were carefully edited to suggest he might be thinking of swinging after all. Shane had shown his class yet again by calling a Casaya powwow just before everyone headed off to Tribal Council so they could decide who to vote off. Doing it right in front of La Mina was cheesy enough, but making a flagrant effort to include Bruce in the circle of trust was pathetic.

Unfortunately it must have worked, because the 6-4 vote went strictly along tribal lines to Nick's detriment. Hitting the key swing voter in the face with a machete probably didn't help his cause and sadly for him he misses out on a place in the Jury.

Shane got the four La Mina votes and looked a bit like he'd also been hit in the face (bad Jeff for reading them all out first and falsely getting my hopes up that Shane was gone). I'd love to know who Shane thought they would vote for. Actually I don’t think I want to pollute myself with any more about what Shane thinks.

What he might want to remember is that in previous series the stronger team going into the merge gets rid of their crazy people as soon as the numbers make it safe to do so. And as Danni in Guatemala and Chris from Vanuatu will remind us, it's possible to win even as the odd one out…

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 7

For my money, tonight was one of the best episodes so far this season although it was missing the medical emergency promised in the ad. That recap filler episode during the Easter ratings break must have gotten them all confused down at Channel Eddie.

We weren't let down on the promise of a "huge" challenge. What made it "huge" (aside from the amount of grassland mown down to assemble it) were the twists. The first was that it was a combined reward and immunity challenge. The reward part was a barbecue at a nearby Panamanian fishing village for the entire winning tribe. As usual the reward winners also got to send a member of the losing tribe to Exile Island, and the second twist was that they were effectively granting individual immunity to that person since the rest of the losing tribe would have to attend Tribal Council that night.

The event itself was essentially a variation on the previous day's immunity challenge. Some tribemates collected puzzle pieces and the rest tried to assemble them faster than the other team. They even recycled the bit where the puzzle pieces are shaped like skulls, so the key difference to the previous day was that it was played on land and some production costs were saved by using regular grade plywood instead of the usual marine grade.

La Mina led from very early on and looked like a certainty to win because they had Sally and Dan the NASA engineer assigned to solving the puzzle. As soon as the game started they were trying to calculate where each piece would go, so they looked certain to win. Twist number three was that when the first skull turned out not to fit the way he thought it would, Dan fell to pieces and let Cirie and Bruce canter to an easy victory for Casaya.

The decision to combine reward and immunity challenges coincidentally freed up a good seven extra minutes to linger on Shane's descent into madness and confusion. The episode opened at Casaya's camp in the hours after Bobby was voted off, with the tribe all in bed and almost asleep. Shane makes an announcement: "We made the wrong decision tonight…Danielle. And we made that decision because of your personal feelings. Period. And it's a bad, bad, bad thing. Bruce is falling apart. It's not his fault, but he's 58 and nervous." And yes, Bruce was lying there the whole time pretending to just ignore it all.

Shane went on (and on and on, including the following morning) to say that he wants out of the alliance with Danielle, Courtney and Aras because he doesn't want to be beholden to people who make decisions based on personal feelings (entirely irrational decisions are OK, just not person ones). He also claimed that he can't leave the alliance "unless you guys allow me to take my son's name back" (?!?!) This was a strange burst of morality and blame-storming from someone who a few hours earlier voted against Aras, a member of his own alliance, and who was the one to first put the idea in everyone's head that Bobby should be voted out. Danielle just wanted him to stop, on the grounds that, "I came here to enjoy myself, not to be demeaned." Of course you did, darl, now just tug that bikini top down a little further.

Cirie has been a source of constant delight to me, both for the way her voice goes up three octaves just before she laughs and for the quiet way she plays a very strategic background game. She could easily make the final three at this rate. At the barbecue reward she was also the only one to really take some non-food nourishment from the fresh human contact. Sorry, that's not strictly correct. Shane managed to scab a cigarette from one of the villagers, offering most of his clothes and all of his dignity in exchange. His fervent consumption of it – which was just revolting to watch - very much fell into the non-food nourishment category because the nicotine suddenly made him sane. He apologised to Danielle, who seemed to actually believe that he was sorry and wanted to stay with her and that he'd never abuse her again. If she was hoping for some higher self-esteem out of that breast augmentation surgery she must be sorely disappointed.

You may have missed some of the subtleties of this week's episode if you haven't read Tom Wolfe's classic book, The Right Stuff . (It's a fantastic read, and one I recommend so much that I'm supplying a link to the appropriate page on Amazon so you can buy it. Or just rent the DVD.)

Americans worship their astronauts the way Australians worship those who are good at sport. This week Dan confessed his true role in the Shuttle program to Nick, who instantly fell to fawning and adoration. Since that went so well the secret was also shared with Austin, for whom the fact that Dan has merely dined with Neil Armstrong makes him a "stud", let alone his three space missions, four spacewalks and two visits to the International Space Station.

This hero worship is one of the key themes in The Right Stuff. The other is that those with the Right Stuff genuinely are heroes who behave with dignity and do the right thing (well, most of the time at least). With Sally relishing the safety of Exile Island, the La Mina menfolk had to pick one of their own to vote out at Tribal Council. Hero or not, Dan's failure to solve the puzzle at the reward/immunity challenge was the freshest sin in everyone's memory. As Terry broke the news to Dan that he would be voted out, Dan nobly accepted his fate (cue inspirational Hollywood music) and accepted responsibility for his mistake, or "my bad" as he put it. He expressed hope that it might come to a tied vote with the outcome decided in some little on-the-spot competition at Tribal Council, but the decision had already been made. Just in case we'd missed it, Terry reminded us in his piece to camera that "Dan has the Right Stuff."

The Jerry Bruckheimer music continued all the way through the walk to Tribal Council, the interview with Jeff, Dan's pointed observation that two people stuffed up the challenge but one of them has immunity (yeah Sally, take that!), his gracious acceptance of his fate and the reading out of the inevitable vote result. Austin, Nick and Terry all stood up as Dan's torch was snuffed, Dan saluted them (seriously, I'm not kidding), they all kind of saluted back and he strode off into the dark in slow motion.

That leave ten Survivors, the point at which the tribes traditionally merge, and if the ad is to be believed it happens next week. Also Bruce gets hit in the face with a machete, which apparently his karate reflexes didn't help him avoid. More fence painting and car waxing for you, Mr Miyagi!

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 6

Here's some highlights from last night's Survivor highlights show (with 17% brand new, never-before-seen-on-TV material!!).

• Courtney trying to open a coconut with a machete, and proving that she didn't watch Survivor Vanuatu, where the technique was demonstrated repeatedly.
  
• Shane declaring, "I like odd people!" Lucky for him Danielle picked him for the new Casaya tribe (bet she's regretting that now), because it's full of odd people.
  
• Misty getting absolutely grilled by the rest of her tribe about whether or not she really found the Individual Immunity Idol.
  
• Bruce insisting on using some of the Older Men's last half bottle of drinking water to wash his hands, despite his team's vehement opposition, despite all the water in the ocean being only a few feet away, and despite the rain pouring down outside.
  
• Courtney trying to cheer everyone up during a thunderstorm by singing. The trick worked every bit as well in Guatemala as it did in Salzburg in the 1930's, only they weren't quite a tuneful as the Von Trapp kiddies.
  
• Aras talking Shane into staying during those early days when he wanted to quit (bet he's regretting that now).
  
• Casaya tucking into a meal of roasted snake, and someone actually being surprised that it tastes like chicken. Everyone knows that every kind of meat you can't buy at a butcher tastes like chicken. Except human flesh, which apparently tastes more like pork.
  
• Casaya singing the most funereal version of Happy Birthday I've ever heard to mark the occasion of Shane's son Boston's 13th birthday. More noteworthy was the cheer at the end, which could have been either a genuine good wish for Boston, or relief that the singing was over. I cheered too, so it was probably the latter.
  
• Bobby tricking Danielle into taking care of the fire. She dragged him out of bed to help, so he played dumb and pretended he didn't know what to do. Cirie was in on the joke well before Danielle burst out "Oh, just let me do it!" Mission accomplished, Bobby headed straight back to bed.
  
• The soap scene. As we know, Casaya won Olay soap as well as the Charmin toilet paper. The girls quickly snagged one bar for girls' use only (the boys have two bars on which they are allowed to leave black hairs) and headed out to sea to clean up. Someone cried out "Thank God for that bar of soap!" It may have been Danielle, but I suspect it was a camera man or someone in the editing suite, because they suddenly had an excuse to show a very close-up shot of Danielle washing her lovely decolletage. In order to get a good view of the Olay logo (to keep the sponsors happy) they had to zoom in so tight you couldn't even see Danielle's head for once. Gee, sorry about that Danielle. Fortunately we didn't get such a close-up shot of Shane washing his butt and telling the girls he was doing it with their soap.

Probably the most noteworthy aspect of the show was that all the amusing footage came from either the initial four tribes or Casaya's camp. La Mina's only contribution was the dramatic counterpart when Sally confessed to Austin that her parents won't speak to her any more because she got a divorce. I felt bad for her, but I also felt bad for the producers that all the boring people ended up in the one tribe so now they have to create an episode like this to correct the balance between how much footage Casaya gives them and how much they can cram into each episode without it getting a little unbalanced. Bring on the merge!

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 5

Quote of the week goes to Aras. It occurred a couple of minutes into Scene II of Act I. Aras has announced that the day's objective for everyone – whether they like it or not – is to boil water. Bruce has decided instead to build a Zen stone garden. Aras tells Bruce he has to collect firewood. Bruce refuses. Nobody else is collecting firewood either, but Aras accuses Bruce of being selfish by claiming (here it comes!) "I'm working as a team!" There's no "I" in "team", Aras, but there is a couple in "dictatorship".

The reward challenge definitely required teamwork. Each tribe had to retrieve a bag of rice, a bag of beans and six huge tuna from a boat and pass them along a human chain, with the winner getting to keep all their food plus spices to flavour it and bottles of wine. Carbohydrates in bags is really easy to throw and catch. Tuna is not unless you're Dean Lukin. La Mina have generally struggled to catch fish, and Sally could only manage once it had fallen in the sand a few times and was less slippery. Just to make things gruesome enough for the 7:30 time slot, the last person in the chain also had to cut off the head and tail. Bruce the karate expert might, in theory, have had more luck with the side of his hand, but he persevered for stroke after stroke after gory, ineffective stroke with the cleaver to ensure we were all completely put off our dinner.

Bobby managed to win for Casaya in yet another close finish, which once again gave them the right to send Terry to Exile Island. La Mina at least got to keep their bag of beans as a reward, but without Mom supervising they didn't cook them long enough and ate too much, then spent the rest of the night wishing they'd won all those rolls of Charmin toilet paper the week before. May I just say a big thank you to Nick for doing his best to explain without being too graphic the effect of undercooked beans on his digestive system. Mine was still struggling to hold on to dinner after the fish decapitations.

Sickness was also a worry at Casaya. They returned from the challenge with 45kg of raw fish to discover an ankle-deep lake where their fire used to be, and no dry firewood for cooking. The Californians were all, like, totally cool with sashimi. Cirie is allegedly a nurse back in the real world, so I expected her to articulate her concerns at eating raw fish with a slightly more scientific phrase than, "I hope I don't wake up in the morning with some kind of … sickness or something!"

Bobby and Bruce did wake up in the morning looking kind of seedy, which could have been either the effects of drinking a bottle of wine between them or doing so in the toilet. Either way, the girls showed them no pity. Guys, never get between a woman like Courtney and a bottle of Chardonnay!

Maybe the immunity challenge tree mail had them all too excited, but nobody seemed to notice that Jeff failed to ask Terry on his return from Exile Island whether he'd found the Individual Immunity Idol. The challenge involved rowing out to sea, diving down to four timber coffins, opening them and retrieving from each one a set of four human skulls welded together in strange patterns. Back on land the teams had to assemble the skulls to form a pyramid. It was like one of those natty artistic timber coffee table puzzles that well-meaning guests pull apart the day after you forget what the one and only correct answer is, only slightly creepier because of the skulls.

Dan whacked his head on the bottom of their boat during the skull retrieval phase, but was able to shrug off the concussion enough to cheer when La Mina got it right and won their first challenge in weeks. More importantly they sent Casaya to Tribal Council, which put Shane's Alliance Of The Unwilling to its biggest test yet. His announcement, "Bobby. No other discussion. Bobby goes down today," had about as much effect as Aras ordering Bruce to collect firewood. Not surprisingly, Aras wanted to vote out Bruce. Bruce wanted to vote out Courtney because she desecrated the calm and sanctity of his Zen rock garden by practising yoga in it. Courtney convinced Danielle and Cirie (who a mere week early had been told she'd be next to go after Melinda) to vote Bobby out because he drank the wine. By this time, however, Shane had formed an alliance with Bobby and no longer wanted to vote him out.

Confused? Not as much as Jeff was at Tribal Council when four different people received votes, which is unheard of this far into the game. Shane's alliance of four voted for three different people, and in the end it was the new girls' alliance and their block of three votes against Bobby that prevailed and made him the first man sent home this season.

If quote of the week went to Aras, facial expression of the week went to Shane. If you've still got it on tape, watch the absolute bewilderment on his face when Jeff utters the word "honesty".

Don't forget that Survivor is on again Wednesday night as we try to catch up to the US in time for the final, although if the TV guide is correct it's a filler episode reviewing what's happened in the last five weeks. Shouldn't that happen closer to the end? How will we ever catch up at this rate?

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 4

The morning after is always an uncomfortable time for a man who has done a woman wrong, and both Nick and Austin were having a lot of trouble looking Sally in the eye following the Tribal Council at which they voted out Misty despite an alleged alliance with both girls.

In one of the strangest leaps of logic ever witnessed on Survivor, Dan the astronaut decided their alliance of four boys needed a fifth member to ensure their dominance after the merge. Here's just a few of the problems with that idea:

1. The merge usually happens with ten people left, so five isn't enough for security.
   
2. With six people left they can only afford to lose one more immunity challenge before the plan collapses.
   
3. Since they need to win the challenges they need the strongest players in their alliance.
   
4. Sally is by far stronger than Ruth Marie.
   
5. Dan didn't check with the rest of the alliance before making an offer to Ruth Marie.

At Casaya the inter-alliance arguments between Shane, Courtney, Aras and Danielle have reached such a critical – and utterly entertaining – stage they've had to implement a rule of "no arguments during dinner". Cirie is working her butt off, and Courtney and Danielle are at least in an alliance. Snoop-Bob (as he likes to be known) has no excuse for sleeping all day other than being too damn cool to really care.

The reward challenge involved two great Survivor traditions: marine-grade plywood and blatant contra. Each contestant had to retrieve a large triangular puzzle piece floating in the water, wrangle it into a frame and then work with the others to match the symbols on each side. It was basically a giant game of Triominos, which brought back my childhood almost as much as the "no arguments during dinner" rule.

The prize was a bathroom stocked with Charmin toilet paper, a nameless loofa, some nameless towels, five litres of nameless water and some Olay soap. The marketing folk at Olay obviously didn't pay as much as their Charmin cousins, because we only saw the Olay soap logo once whereas the timber portaloo was festooned with plenty of twee "Casa de Charmin" signage.

Casaya won the reward, and despite a team agreement that the portaloo be used to keep things like towels and firewood dry, Snoop-Bob declared – in quite specific detail –that he intended to christen it first. I think he just wanted to show off his impressive range of euphemisms for the number two. Hopefully he remembered to use both the Charmin and the Olay when he finished.

Of course the other part of Casaya's reward was getting to send Terry to Exile Island for a couple of days. Since the weather was perfect the whole time it was less of a problem for Terry than it was for the rest of his tribe, who couldn't cope without their SuperMom. Without him, nothing works in an orderly fashion and there's nobody who is completely in charge. Nobody knows how to use the flint to make fire. Dan even made all the kids promise that the place would be spotless when Mom got home.

Terry, meanwhile, was enjoying plenty of extra clues to the Individual Immunity Idol's secret hiding place. He very quickly picked up that two clues included the word "why", translated that into the letter "Y", deduced that it was referring to a specific tree of that shape, lifted a particular rock, dug a few feet and found the talisman. He's now pretty much safe until the final three so they might as well give him the million bucks now, but not until somebody asks some hard questions about how many hints the camera crew dropped. Maybe it was just skilful editing, but gee it looked rigged.

Since it wasn't dinner time, Casaya broke out into full-fledged war about Danielle's work ethic, or lack thereof. Shane took the not very subtle route of asking why she has, quote, "such an aversion to work." She was affronted because she has been a sports captain so he shouldn't speak to her like that. I'm not sure that I understand the logic, nor that I particularly want to.

The immunity challenge involved pairs roped together running along a balance beam course to collect water in little buckets. The water went into a drum as a counter balance to another tribe member sitting on a swing and waiting to be raised high enough to release a flag. The rain was enough to make things slippery but not help much with the bucket filling. In an exciting finish, Shane and Courtney's haphazard pouring was faster than Sally and Austin's more water-wise efforts, and helped Casaya to a narrow win and clean sweep of this week's challenges.

La Mina's pain at losing was eased by Mom being home and immediately taking charge. Sally made a no-nonsense pitch for survival, which obviously worked because Terry and Austin started looking for loopholes to vote out Ruth Marie instead. Technically only Dan had promised Ruth Marie membership, but Nick and Dan wanted to stick to the spirit of the deal more than the letter of the law. Austin declared himself the new messiah for pulling off the miracle of changing Terry's mind. Somehow I don't think Terry will share that opinion when he watches the episode.

At Tribal Council, Ruth Marie described being "small in statue" (sic) as the reason she feels on the outside. Sally admitted to having no idea which way it would go, but looked pretty relieve to be on the winning side when Ruth Marie was voted out 4-2.

Tonight's episode was brought to you by Charmin, Olay and the number 2.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 3

This is the twelfth season of Survivor, and yet the contestants still manage to miss fundamental aspects of the game. For example, it's unwise to rush into an alliance with people you barely know, but it's idiotic to then tell the rest of the tribe of both the existence and precise composition of that alliance. Why? Because when your coalition turns out to be more dysfunctional than the cast of a Woody Allen movie you look like a loser to everyone else regardless of whether you leave the alliance or put up with it. And Cirie is laughing like a hyena all the way to the merge.

Melinda's spot in Casaya was barely cold before Mr Miyagi was in it, imparting wisdom and making character judgements. Bruce says he can see at least six different personality types within Casaya, but didn't indicate how many of them Shane accounts for.

His first pearl was that filtering water through three layers of t-shirt gets rid of 90% of the bacteria. He's taught backpacking to high school students for 30 years so he knows these things. Personally I'm guessing that 10% of the germs in a third world country is still more than enough to kill a healthy adult, let alone someone who hasn't eaten properly in a week. I also wonder how many germs are put back into the water by a t-shirt that hasn’t been washed properly in a week. Or by sharing the one water bottle between seven.

La Mina isn't faring any better on the food front because choking back tears of frustration that Sally lost their spear doesn't count as nutrition. Luckily Terry caught one small fish, which was enough to give them all a protein boost going into the reward challenge. There were blankets, pillows and a tarpaulin for the winning team, but there must also have been something on offer to the camera men for whomever got the best shot of Danielle's lovely decolletage. Seriously, watch in future how often she gets a lingering upper-body close-up whenever she’s in a bikini. There's surely a drinking game in it.

The reward challenge involved four tribe members on a balance beam out at sea trying to catch cannon balls fired from a slingshot on the beach by one of the other three. La Mina won and got to pick which member of Casaya would be deported to Exile Island to stay until the next immunity challenge. Since Casaya had spent most of the opening chit-chat with Jeff raving about how much better Bruce was making their lives it was a no-brainer. He’s now spent more time on Exile Island than with either of his tribes, and for most of that time it’s rained. He’s also only got one t-shirt through which to filter his water, which must be frustrating.

The only thing in Panama that turns faster than the weather is Shane's mood. In the ads we saw him sitting on a stump throwing a tanty to make a three-year-old proud. Surprisingly it was far more dramatic within the context of the episode, since the moments leading up to it were quite warm and playful before he suddenly snapped. Everyone in his tribe – and most specifically those in his alliance – thinks he’s a few analogies short of a metaphor. He thinks they’re nuts, too. The funny bit is that they’re all too busy complaining about the lousy deal they’ve struck to do anything about it and try making a new alliance with some sane people. Cirie, Bobby and Bruce only need to lure one member away to tip the balance in their own favour. Danielle is probably the prime candidate, because Aras is on his own after telling Cirie she’s dispensable and Courtney is just as narky and unpredictable as Shane. She also thinks that La Mina's choice to send Bruce back to Exile Island was the most evil thing she's seen people do, so she needs to read more.

Things couldn’t be more different at La Mina, where everyone is being very careful to be nice to each other’s faces. Misty, who wants us all to know she’s a natural born flirt, has been giving all the boys back rubs, because that way they’ll like her and won’t vote her off. For such a book smart girl it was an incredibly adolescent strategy, and it got an equally adolescent response from Nick and Austin: they lapped it up but still thought less of her for it. We even got a nicely spliced in shot of Nick out in the ocean trying to scrub the ‘girl germs’ off his shoulders.

The immunity challenge was one of the most novel ones the producers have ever come up with. Five wrestling rings were laid out on the sand, one for each round. Buried within each ring was a pillow-sized bag. Each team had a mat to mark its own home plate. In each round, a few members of each tribe had to race to dig up the bag and get it back to their home plate, while simultaneously preventing the other team from doing the same. It was essentially a cross between a pillow fight, mud wrestling and rugby. Well, when the girls were competing against each other it was more like pillow fight / mud wrestling and for the boys it was more like rugby. At least that seemed to be the editing suite policy, along with enthusiastic deployment of the pixelating machine.

Like the reward challenge it was a very close contest, but unlike the reward challenge Casaya won. Misty explained that it was because "they’ve got so much more weight than we have", while looking smug and rubbing her neck at the spot where Cirie sat on her. Most members of La Mina got their first taste of Tribal Council, and we got the third rendition of Jeff’s incantation that fire equals life on Survivor. Austin nicely deflected a question about what happened to the spear without mentioning Sally’s name. Ruth Marie agreed that she’s vulnerable as the only member of La Mina without another member of her original tribe for company. Misty looked smug again while talking about how close everyone is. The boys and Ruth Marie all agreed with her, and then voted her out regardless.

In the final humiliation she was forced to reveal that she had not found the Individual Immunity Idol after all. As the third person voted off she’ll be in the back row at the reunion special, so at least she’ll get another chance to show off those neck rub skills.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 2

Last week we learned that Shane is a 'character' so the episode opened with him complaining non-stop about how "this place breathes bad luck". He was promptly rewarded with a massive lightening strike and accompanying thunder clap that could only be the work of a vengeful deity.

In fact the entire theme for this week's show was "self fulfilling prophecy". Either the world truly moves in mysterious ways, or the camera crew just shoot so much film they've got enough to create almost any scenario necessary when they get to the editing suite.

Tina's absence was felt at the older women's camp; her shelter kept them warm and dry (well, relative to those at the other camps) but lighting fire using the flint and machete turned out to be not quite so easy as she made it look. The younger women, meanwhile, found some papaya and will have trouble topping their ecstasy-faking performances when it's time for a proper food reward in a couple of weeks.

At the reward challenge the familiar phrase, "Drop your buffs!" rang out as the four tribes merged into two new ones with proper names. Danielle and Terry led the schoolyard pick and set the early tone for the composition of each team. Let's just say that as a rule of thumb the grounded, sensible people ended up in La Mina tribe, and Casaya is obviously Spanish for "dumb loud white folks plus the token black people".

Bruce was led through a slightly cruel, but nonetheless entertaining, emotional roller coaster. First he was sad because nobody picked him for their tribe and he was the last one left. Then he was happy because he replaces whoever gets voted out at the next tribal council and is therefore immune this week. Then he was sad again because he had to wait for tribal council on Exile Island. Then he was happy again because he got a chance to look for the Individual Immunity Idol.

If he'd been able to see the challenge site he'd have been even happier, because it was yet another checklist of classic obstacles, with the added visual frisson of very large and startlingly good fake snakes that had to be collected and carried along with the team. The only interesting bit was when Cirie jumped into a mud pool and landed on Bobby's head, which may explain why he didn't utter another word the entire episode. We also learnt that Sally's wardrobe of navy blue Jana Pittman socks includes versions that reach just under and just over the knee, both of which look absurd with a bikini.

In yet another predictable development the winners of the first proper reward challenge got fishing gear. We had some lovely camera shots of how many fish live off the Panama coast, just to rub in how pathetic it would be not to catch one. A few minutes later we saw Sally and Nick paddling back to camp empty handed. In between we watched with a horrified sense of the inevitable as Sally talked about how bad it would be to lose their one and only spear. The true disappointment was that the camera was on Nick while her 'practice' shot disappeared into the wild blue yonder, and it was sadly obvious that the producers had gone back later on with another spear to get some useable patch-up footage.

Meanwhile, back on Exile Island, Bruce (aka Mr Miyagi) showed off his impressive karate routine and talked about the mental strength it would give him to cope all alone with just a cameraman, sound guy, gaffer, best boy and second assistant director for company. He didn't look quite so mentally strong when it rained all night.

The highlight of the entire episode was Shane. He claims to not need the prize money, but it's hard to work out how a man so incapable of behaving appropriately could be that successful. Maybe it's the effect of his cold-turkey nicotine and caffeine detox, or maybe he's like that all the time, but he spent most of the episode making a fool of himself. He declared at the immunity challenge that his entire tribe felt utterly weakened. With a pep talk like that it's little wonder they lost, and Jeff made it worse by pointing out that La Mina only won because Casaya was – quote – "absolutely inept."

Back at camp, Shane asked his tribemates to vote him off because he wanted to go home. Then he let Aras change his mind for him and announced he wanted to stay. Together they initiated one of the clumsiest attempts at tough love I've ever seen on TV. Aras told Cirie and Melinda that he wanted to be honest and not deceptive about the fact he'd be voting for one of them – "I haven't decided which yet" – and that the other members of his alliance agreed with him. Shane consoled them with the news that it didn't matter which one was voted off first since the other would be next voted off anyway.

Courtney, who likes to, like, punctuate, like, everything in this, like, totally L.A manner, was clearly upset to have her membership of an alliance with Shane, Aras and Danielle exposed so early and so clumsily (or perhaps she was just embarrassed to be in an alliance with Shane). Nevertheless she stuck with them and voted out Melinda in a 5-2 decision.

Next Tuesday we get more of Shane's descent into madness, and in even better news we don't have to wait much longer to find out what happens after that because Channel Eddie will be running another episode next Wednesday night.

Amazing Race: week 3

Sorry not to have posted last week, but I was psyching myself up for Survivor.

I’d like to offer some advice to competitors on the Amazing Race: think about the challenges before you decide who will perform the Roadblock and which Detour you’ll do. For example:

1. If you're afraid of flying, don't choose the challenge that involves travelling in a helicopter (loud "gay" bloke take note).
   
2. If you're afraid of heights, don't volunteer for the challenge that involves climbing a building and rappelling back down the side (one of the Danielles - and I totally don't care which of you it was - take note).
   
3. If you’re at a swimming pool (even in Moscow) there’s an extremely high likelihood that the challenge will involve swimming. If you can’t swim, don’t offer to do the challenge before you know what it is (the wife in this year’s token black couple, take note).
   
4. If you’re at a swimming pool and you know the challenge involves jumping off a diving platform and then duck diving to retrieve the next clue, and you’re mortally terrified of deep water, don’t offer to do the challenge (Desiree, take note).
   
5. If you are the partner of one of these people, and you know that there’s a really good chance they’ll freak out and freeze, say something. Or perhaps don’t, because it does make kinda good television.

Some other observations:

1. The "hippies" are going to do very well on both the physical and mental challenges. They get a big tick from me for taking the time to stop and admire the Russian cathedral this week, and treat the place with the respect it deserved. From memory only one other team even bothered to look up.
   
2. The nerds are just adorable.
   
3. Phil really doesn’t like the frat boys. I haven’t seen such a tight cat’s bum mouth from him on the welcome mat since Jonathan and Victoria. Phil, I’m with you 100% on that one.
   
4. Lake’s wife either deserves a medal or sainthood or a good smack upside the head for putting up with him. Also that weird circular bandaid on the side of his neck has suddenly disappeared. I’d LOVE to hear suggestions from people on what it might have been concealing.
   

Next week we get the second half of the current Moscow leg. While this kind of programming tomfoolery normally gets up my nose, at least this week it means there's a chance the frat boys won't win it. There's also still time for the Danielles to overtake and show no sympathy when the boys stuff up. It hasn't happened yet, but it will happen. Even if I need to get involved to make it happen. They really annoy me.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 1

Oh I've just missed that theme music so much!

Welcome back to another season of Survivor. As explained in the pre-season Form Guide, this year we have four tribes split down age and gender lines. Apparently they have proper tribe names, but everyone (including Jeff) is calling them the "younger men", the "older men", the "older women" and the "younger women". Bobby bestowed a far catchier nomenclature: the Beefcakes, the Love Boat crew, the Golden Girls and the Spice Girls (and if he's old enough to know about the Love Boat what's he doing on the younger men's tribe?).

In one of the most exciting opening scenes I can remember, the tribes each had to pick a member to participate for them in the first reward challenge before they'd even had a chance to meet each other. Austin's tongue was hanging out so far perving at the Spice Girls that he tripped over it as the race started. Terry was first to smash enough human skulls to find a hidden amulet. Danielle bragged about her athleticism, so it was no surprise when she lost and her team missed out on flint to make fire. The Spice Girls also had to leave a member behind on Exile Island, but more about that later.

On arrival at their beach the Golden Girls got stuck straight into making fire, finding water and building a shelter. The Love Boat crew did the same. The Beefcake guys played a little coconut baseball, then were led by Aras the yoga instructor in a meditation to help them start fire, which was far less effective than flint v machete. The Spice Girls found a dead turtle, which momentarily distracted them from the effort of avoiding making a decision about where to build a shelter.

A couple of individuals stood out early.

• Cirie is afraid of machetes and leaves, or more specifically what lives under the leaves and is left homeless by the machete. She's never been camping. It shows.
• Shane complained about his team mates being morons, but he was the only one wearing a woollen beanie on a tropical island. He's detoxing from his three-pack-a-day smoking habit. I hope for his sake he means three of those 15-packs Phillip Morris makes especially for school kiddies on limited pocket money.
• Dan the retired astronaut and Terry the retired F-14 pilot formed a Right Stuff alliance and promised never to lie to each other. I'm laughing already.
• Sally has been taking fashion hints from Jana Pittman and wears long socks with shorts, but otherwise seems pretty sensible.
• Austin's bum cleavage peeking out the top of his shorts wins the prize for the first body part to be pixilated this season.
• Misty is not a rocket scientist, she's a "missile engineer".
• Tina's hair is long, blonde, curly, and looks like Two Minute Noodles.

As mentioned, the Spice Girls had to leave a member behind on Exile Island overnight as punishment for failing the first challenge. In a riveting game of rock-paper-scissors, Misty lost and got the first chance to look for the Individual Immunity Idol hidden there. (Jeff claimed to have given her clues as to its whereabouts, but I rewound the video trying to work out what they were and I'm stumped.) The Individual Immunity Idol idea is alliterative and recycled, but the twist this year is that one may wait until after one has been voted off before unveiling one's possession of it, and completely throw the strategy of one's back-stabbing tribemates.

Since there's no fire and no fresh water on Exile Island, Misty had to eat worms to fuel her fruitless search for the Individual Immunity Idol. She played a pretty ingenious trick when reunited with the rest of the Survivors by pretending that she'd found it, but we all expected her to be smart because she's a missile engineer and brunette, which is Hollywood speak for 'smart' the same way that 32 years of age is 'older' for a woman. Now we have to wait and see whether anyone has the guts to call her on it, or whether they simply don't bother either a) looking for the idol themselves, or b) voting for her.

The immunity challenge involved the usual combination of diving under water to release hooks, raft paddling, marine grade plywood, sand digging, puzzle solving, grappling hooks and coloured flags to show who won. The Spice Girls had dug up the puzzle clue before the Beefcakes had even beached their raft, but in the end the Golden Girls lost the challenge in no small part thanks to Melinda just standing there doing nothing.

Luckily for her, nobody heard Jeff point that out because she survived the first trip to a magnificent cave-themed Tribal Council set. Everyone talked about how much tougher Survivor is in real life than it looks on TV, and Cirie's advice to her fellow Americans was "If you're at all like me, STAY ON THE COUCH!" (and for Tom Cruise that's stay seated on the couch). Since she's probably the most entertaining member of the Golden Girls it's lucky for the producers that she also survived a surprise vote that saw Tina the 'lumberjill' sent home first. Tina had started the fire, found the water supply and more importantly found a very large and very live fish stranded on rocks by the outgoing tide, but once she'd shown everyone else how to do it all she was dispensable.

Jeff, who seems to be getting more grumpy every season, was less than amused by their strategy, but he's got a new Crocodile Dundee hat to keep him company so he'll cope. Next week we get the traditional night 2 thunderstorm, which is guaranteed to both amuse and provoke immediate shelter improvements. I honestly don't know how the producers manage to arrange that every season...

Thank you Lake

Sorry seems to be the hardest word, which is a sad, sad situation in a culture where individuals no longer takes responsibility for their own behaviour.

Now, thanks to Lake-Like-The-Ocean, we have the next best thing and the phrase "That may be partially my fault" has already become a staple form of confession at our place.

Reality TV gives so much and takes so little.

Amazing Race: week 1

I probably should have taped the show since I was kind of planning to blog on it, but the contestants are just a blur of stereotypes in the first few weeks anyway, so who cares what their names are.

The last series (well, the last one we Oss-ies got to see, anyway, since Channel 7 decided to skip the series where familes of four raced around North America) had:

• an old couple;
• a black couple;
• a pair of roller girls;
• a pair of college room mates who bore a spooky resemblance to each other;
• a pair of frat boys who oggled the roller girls and the Barbie twins;
• a mother with her annoying offspring;
• a suspected wife beater; and
• a gay couple.

This season we have:

• an old couple;
• a black couple;
• a pair of roller girls who bear a spooky resemblance to each other;
• a pair of frat boys who are oggling the roller girl Barbie twins;
• an annoying mother with her offspring;
• TWO suspected wife beaters; and
• two blokes who claim to be just good friends, but take five syllables to pronounce the word "hello".

We also have a pair of self-confessed nerds and some middle-aged Texan "Glamazons", none of whom are taking the show the least bit seriously. The absolute prize for that, though, goes to BJ and Tyler, a pair of crazy cool cats who both have long hair and have been nicknamed "hippies" by the couple they nicknamed "Ken and Barbie".

There's some pretty funny names, too. The rollergirls are named Danni and Danielle. Wife beater number 1 is named 'Lake'. He introduced himself to the male member of the token black team in the following exchange:

Lake: "Hi, my name's Lake, like the ocean."
Ray: "Hi, my name's Ray, like the sun."

We saw Lake in medical scrubs, so the chances are he's not a lawyer and won't sue me for calling him a wife beater. I'm not suggesting that he (or Ken from Ken'n'Barbie ) specifically hits his wife, but you can just tell that the woman don't get a whole lot of respect or freedom. Abuse takes myriad forms, and far be it for me to laugh at such a serious issue. It's just scary that Jonathan and Victoria created so much interest - and such high ratings - that the producers now feel the need to include two relationships with that kind of dynamic.

We also got a whole lot of other typical Amazing Race moments. Yet again the teams are starting out in South America, this time Sao Paolo, Brazil. We had the token old couple staggering around and walking straight past the clue box, FIVE times, then claiming it had been moved to that spot after they walked past! Best of all we had someone not reading the instructions properly. Lake (I really don't like him, in case you hadn't guessed) started out in the back seat with the clue while his wife drove. He tells her to pull over at a phone box, and makes her phone the airport to reserve tickets on the first plane. They get back in the car with him driving this time. She reads the clue for herself and points out that they're specifically prohibited from phoning ahead to reserve tickets. He admits that the fact they're now running dog last due to the illegal roadside stop "may by partially my fault". I wonder which part wasn't his fault, and to whom the responsibility for that part rightly falls...

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: Pre-show form guide

Yes, series 12 of Survivor starts in the US on Thursday February 2nd, a mere nine sleeps away.

Here is the traditional pre-show form guide with its usual snap judgements about people I've never met, based on dodgy stereotypes about their jobs, ages, and favourite things. Remember, they provided the info: I'm just interpreting it.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor12/

Aras – 24, Yoga Instructor
Played one season in Lithuania, now claims to be a former professional basketballer. Probably not Santa Monica's only yoga instructor with an MBA.

Austin – 24, Author
His first book, Somewhere Beyond Here, sounds frighteningly Oedipal in its plot. His second and third efforts haven't been published.

Bobby – 32, Attorney
Grew up in South Central LA, made it to Stanford Law School, and then blew all his credibility by being a contestant on Blind Date.

Nick – 25, Financial Sales
Describes himself as over-analytical but applied for Survivor "to meet smart, beautiful women". Needs to spend less time in the frat house.

Bruce – 58, Karate Instructor
So many Mr Miyagi jokes, only fourteen episodes. Top-level black belt, but still managed to get bitten by a rattlesnake while playing golf.

Dan – 52, Retired Astronaut
Has five real and several honorary degrees, made three Shuttle flights, and can't think of a better name for his dog than "Windy". Über-nerd.

Shane – 35, Marketer
My early pick for this season's most obnoxious player. Lists his favourite sport to play as "all, flag football". No idea about anything useful.

Terry – 46, Pilot
High school sports star turned Navy aviator turned commercial pilot and solid family man. Favourite film is Top Gun. Utterly predictable.

Courtney – 31, Circus Performer
Hippy former elite gymnast who teaches fire dancing "as a tool of self-expression". Lives in LA and - naturally - is working on a screenplay.

Danielle – 24, Medical Sales Representative
Stephanie clone: has the same job, the same sports-crazy background and lists the same favourite scents (coconut and vanilla). Stalker.

Misty – 24, Electrical Engineer
Miss Texas Teen 1999, now an engineer studying for her masters and training for a marathon. Big self esteem issues with which to bore everyone.

Sally – 27, Social Worker
Big Survivor fan who finally made it on her fifth application. Has already completed a marathon, which will drive Misty nuts. Might be too nice.

Cirie – 35, Registered Nurse
Claims she can catch fish and do some carpentry, but probably just saw it on TV once. Won't cope with the jungle, flies, dirt, heat etc.

Melinda – 32, Singer
Misses out on the "younger women" tribe by a mere 367 days. Sang with Dolly Parton at Dollywood. Too sweet to survive long on Survivor.

Ruth Marie – 48, Director of Retail Leasing
Was South Carolina's "Watermelon Queen" and its first female drug cop. Completed a 7-day marathon, and will really drive Misty nuts.

Tina – 45, Logging Sports Promoter / Performer
Owner of the World Champion Lumberjills, "Chicks with Axes," a travelling group of female lumberjacks. I'll say no more.