Survivor Fiji: Finale

"Dreamz is a smart guy
But undisciplined in his
Thinking." Well said, Yau.

Well, that’s it for another season. Perhaps the most disappointing thing was that the finale turned out to be three hours of entirely predictable television. Perhaps the most exciting thing is that there will be at least one more series of Survivor. More on that later.

As usual, the final episode started with a recap of the series so far and then it was pretty much straight into an immunity challenge to determine the final four. Survivors had to work their way through five mazes while blindfolded. The drawbridges across shallow moats between each maze gave plenty of extra footage for the "people falling over" montage they ran in the reunion special, and once again showed that brains will beat brawn any day, and that Cassandra really isn’t that competitive.

Yau-Man won, which guaranteed places in the final four for both he and Earl thanks to the immunity necklace and immunity idols they held respectively. Dreamz made lots of noise about how worried he was going into Tribal Council, forgetting – or ignoring – the fact that his deal with Yau-Man of the truck for immunity in the next round made him rather valuable. Cassandra looked stressed, but since that was about the only look on her face for the previous 37 days it didn’t mean much. Boo, who was only still around because he’s won the previous immunities, was absolutely correct in being worried. He didn’t go down without a fight though, pointing out to Earl that the difference between first prize of a million dollars and second prize of a hundred thousand dollars is nine hundred thousand dollars. Somehow I doubt Earl needs Boo to do his math homework for him.

The next day brought an analogy from Earl about how Yau-Man’s the older Asian guy and he’s the young Black guy and they’re buddies and it’s like Rush Hour. Jackie Chan would probably be more flattered by the comparison to Yau-Man than Chris Tucker would be by the comparison to Earl.

Even more torturous was the stroll down memory lane on the way to the final immunity challenge. As many of you know I just hate this bit every season, although Yau-Man lessened my pain to some degree by picking up Jessica’s torch and saying "You were first to go: we hardly knew you" which was blunt and true. The awful, schmultzy Hollywood music playing in the background swelled to a crescendo as they lay all the collected torches on a canoe and set fire to it as it floated out to sea. That’s six minutes of my life that I will never recover.

Jeff cheerfully pointed out that the final immunity challenge would test everyone’s desire to win and tolerance for pain. Apparently Fiji is one of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition sites now, albeit specialising in medieval techniques (maybe the producers subcontract development of tree mail poems to the same torture specialists). Survivors had to hang by the arms while water dripped on their heads, with the angle at which they lay increasing by five degrees every five minutes. It was barbaric – the final immunity challenge always is – but at least the producers have learned from previous seasons and the challenge was over in less than half an hour.

As expected, Cassandra and Earl both went out early leaving just Yau-Man and Dreamz. There was almost no point in Dreamz winning: he’d just have to hand the immunity necklace over to Yau-Man anyway under the terms of their deal over the truck. I was waiting for Yau-Man to point that out and tell him to let go, but it didn’t happen. They both seemed to be looking forward to the inspirational moment at Tribal Council where Dreamz handed the necklace over, fulfilled his promise, set a fine moral example to his son and brought us all a little closer to world peace.

Only it didn’t happen. For days, Dreamz had been talking about how he intended the keep his word and be an honourable man, but he’d also been making noises about not being sure what he’d do until he got to Tribal Council. Dreamz is so infuriatingly inconsistent that nobody really took any notice until the point where Jeff asked if he was going to hand over the necklace and he said "I’m gonna keep it". He could have redeemed the situation by giving back the truck instead, but he didn’t even do that. Very, very disappointing but not very surprising.

What was surprising was Earl’s vote, which along with Cassandra and Dreamz’s made Yau-Man the final jury member and gave us an all African-American final three. They spent their last day burning everything in the camp (which I have to admit is one of my favourite final episode traditions) and enjoying a sumptuous breakfast. Earl’s mother might have been disappointed to watch him eating jam straight out of the jar with a knife, but she’d have been proud of his performance in the final Tribal Council.

Cassandra’s beige-ness and Dreamz’s betrayal meant that Earl was virtually guaranteed to win, and he made it easier still by asking for the respect vote, not the sympathy vote (Dreamz) or the underdog vote (Cassandra). Dreamz tried to claim he wasn’t playing for sympathy, but then reminded everyone about his underprivileged background and how many people he could help with that money and boo hoo woe is me blah blah tell someone who cares.

True to form the jury members’ questions demonstrated more about themselves than the people about whom they were supposed to be learning. Most of them used the opportunity to either simper to Earl and give him an opportunity to look even better, or to attack Dreamz and make him look even stupider. Edguardo did both by asking Earl how he knew about Mookie’s immunity idol, and all Earl had to do was say "Dreamz". Alex the lawyer didn’t so much ask a question as audition for a role on Law and Order. Boo went on an entirely unexpected rampage about whether Dreamz acted as a ‘Christian man’ in the best bible-belting tradition of the revival tent circuit. Rocky’s question was simply incomprehensible, Michelle giggled non-stop, and Mookie backed Dreamz into a corner where he had to try and explain how lying is not the same as betrayal.

Lisi inexplicably criticised Cassandra’s choice of footwear, and then asked Dreamz how many zeros there are in a million. She seemed to think she’d shown him up when he answered "six" until she looked at the jury, saw none of them was laughing and realised that maybe he’d got the answer right. She also created some serious tension when she pointed alternately at Cassandra and Dreamz, chanting "Eenie meenie minie mo, catch a...". It’s ok, she said "liar", but it was fun waiting to see whether Earl, Dreamz or Cassandra would have been first across the Tribal Council floor to deck her if she’d stuck with the traditional version.

And then it was Yau-Man’s turn. He told Dreamz that he felt personally responsible for the mistake of trusting him (which Dreamz answered by saying he’d always planned to go back on his promise, in direct contrast to the crocodile tears he squeezed out on the night). He also gave Earl the chance to admit that he only voted Yau-Man out because he couldn’t beat him, which made them both look good.

The most telling moment in the whole series came when a camera angle showed the votes were positioned vertically in the ballot box and Jeff was just pulling them out at random until he’d read out Earl’s name five times and could declare him the winner. If there had been a vote for anyone else in there the papers would have been read out in a specific order to create a bit of tension. Jeff later admitted that Earl is the only person to have ever won in a clean sweep, which made it even more amazing to learn that Earl doesn’t even watch Survivor and had no real idea of how the game works going into it.

The reunion special proved a number of things:

• Dreamz is incapable of giving a coherent, consistent answer, even to a yes/no question;
• it probably took the skill of every hairdresser on the CBS payroll to brush the knots out of Lisi’s hair, but they eventually managed to clean her up to a presentable standard;
• Rita (aka Miss Venezuela) has a roll of double sided tape and needed most of it to hold her entirely inappropriate dress in place;
• Papa Smurf seems to think that the trauma of three days in the luxury Moto camp justifies getting a tattoo of the Survivor Fiji logo which covers most of his upper arm;
• Boo is either really tough or really stupid (or perhaps both) because he completely tore his ACL when he popped his knee a few weeks into the show, but sought no medical attention for it at the time and hasn’t had it fixed since he got back; and
• Jeff has a natty dark blue sweater as well as the natty duck-egg blue sweater he normally wears at the reunion.

As mentioned earlier, there will be at least one more series of Survivor. Of course whether we get to see it – and if we do, how late we’ll have to stay up – is still uncertain. They’re finally leaving behind the tropics and heading for China of all places. I’m sure the Olympics has nothing to do with the Beijing Government’s decision to allow production of an American TV show for the first time. I’m just looking forward to tribes with names like Taiwan, Tibet and Falun Gong. Voting is too democratic, so perhaps the producers will choose a Survivor at random to be taken out and shot for the organ transplant black market. The gross food challenge will be a doddle, and there could be an entire reward challenge around who can eat the most Yum Cha in a one hour sitting.

Once again it has been my great pleasure to pick the juicy bits out of my favourite show for your Monday morning amusement. Now grab your torches and head back to camp.

Survivor Fiji: week 13

Ford Super Duty;
It can haul three tons of stuff.
Buy one! (Pretty please?)

Apparently next week’s grand finale will be Survivor’s 200th episode. Before you decide to stay up for that milestone event I should warn you that it starts at 11.15pm and runs for three hours, including the reunion. That’s OK, I’ll stay up (*sigh*).

This week gave us one of the most paranoid reactions we’ve seen in 199 episodes. Boo is worried that the others are scheming against him behind his back. Ever the man of action he decided to build a short-cut trail through the jungle to the water well so that he can sneak up and listen in on conversations that take place there. In his foolproof theory he’ll know what everyone is up to and they won’t be able to do a thing about it. Gee Boo that’s, like, really evil. You da man. It’s just a pity that the whole time you were off alone working on this eighth wonder of the modern world everyone else was back at camp talking about you. There’s nothing left for them to say, either at the well or anywhere else.

The crappy tree mail poem was so blatant even Dreamz worked out it was the car challenge. He’s the only one of the remaining six who doesn’t own a car. He’s also the only one without a driver’s licence, but that didn’t stop him from embarking on a campaign of shameless begging to either just be allowed to win the challenge or be handed the prize by the actual winner. Even I thought he had more dignity than that.

Dreamz was wrong: it wasn’t the car challenge, it was a truck challenge. A Ford Super Duty to be precise. It can haul three tons in the tray and tow twelve off the back,. To prove this, after the challenge they hauled a huge crate of school supplies and towed a mobile staff office to a nearby school. I’m not sure if the producers or the Ford marketing team came up with this idea, but they used a hoist to suspend the crate of school supplies over the tray of the truck (sorry, Ford Super Duty) then dramatically drop it to show off the suspension. Not once but twice, from a couple of different camera angles. Wow, that’s a truck!

Despite his team having to go back to the start three times because he kept falling off the balance beam, Yau-Man won. There’s a number of horrible racial stereotypes about men in hats, the elderly and Asians being bad drivers. Yau-Man avoided them all - and simultaneously proved the stereotype about nerds being smarter than jocks - by offering to give Dreamz the car (sorry, truck. Sorry, Ford Super Duty) on the following condition: if they both make it to the final four, and Dreamz wins immunity to make it to the final three, he has to give it to Yau-Man. Of course Dreamz said yes. Of course Jeff looked stunned. Of course Earl just smiled wryly.

As reward winner, Yau-Man also got to pick whom to send to Exile Island. His choices should have been Dreamz, Earl and Cassandra as members of the losing team, but Dreamz had to drive his new Ford Super Duty to the school with its three ton crate of soccer balls and pencil cases. (Actually Boo had to drive because Dreamz doesn’t have a licence, but you get the point.)

In the end, Yau-Man sent himself to Exile Island. He said it’s because Cassandra isn't strong enough to cope out there, and Earl has already had to go too many times. In truth it meant he got the next clue for where Alex’s immunity idol has been rehidden (which he dutifully shared with Earl, who found it easily). He was also spared the pain of visiting the school and witnessing Dreamz trying to teach impressionable children how to speak English.

The immunity challenge was only notable for three things:

1. Jeff’s first opportunity this season to pronounce the word buoy as "boo-ee" (I love that so much!);
2. The editing team’s first ever opportunity to pixelate someone’s potty mouth (in this instance, Stacey); and
3. Boo winning immunity again and stuffing up everyone’s plans to vote him out next.

Many of you know that in my spare time I’m a Contracts Manager, and my inner bush lawyer cringed at the loopholes in the pact between Yau-Man and Dreamz. The main one, which even Dreamz spotted, is that the whole deal is conditional on them both making it to the final four. All Dreamz has to do is get Yau-Man voted out prior to the final four and he gets to keep the car and his spot in the final three. Likewise one might argue that Dreamz does not have the necessary mental capabilities to understand the contractual terms and give informed and binding acceptance of Yau-Man’s offer. Either way, Dreamz tried hard to get rid of Yau-Man this week so that he can honestly welch on the deal and not have the rest of the world think he’s untrustworthy. I mean, if this season has proven nothing else it's that Dreamz can be trusted with a secret, right?

The other pressing loophole is the car curse. Nobody has ever won the car and gone on to win the series. Perhaps it really is a car curse and not a truck (sorry, Ford Super Duty) curse. Is it the winner or the possessor of the car who is cursed? I guess we'll find out next week.

In the lead up to Tribal Council it genuinely looked like Dreamz had convinced Cassandra, Boo and Stacey to help him vote Yau-Man out. It was an easy choice for Stacey, because Boo had immunity and she was the only other unaligned person left for them to vote out. (Oddly, in his recap on last week, Jeff described Alex as the last member of the Four Horsemen alliance. I thought Dreamz was a member, too?) Cassandra had a tougher call to make, because if the plan backfired she’d have burned bridges with both Yau-Man and Earl. Boo just does what he’s told.

Maybe Yau-Man is psychic, or maybe he’s an excellent judge of character. Maybe he’s actually paranoid and says things like this all the time and they just end up on the cutting room floor, but it was oddly prescient when he said to Earl as they left for Tribal Council, "I have bad vibes." Either way he was alert for the hidden meaning when Stacey made a seemingly random comment to Jeff that she believed it would be a split vote that night. It was enough to spook Yau-Man into playing his immunity idol, and he smiled a little bit wider every time Jeff put a vote with his name on it on the scrap heap, leaving two votes for Stacey and none for anyone else.

That puts Stacey on the jury and me out of our office sweep. Next week we get to see if it’s a final three again this season, who those final three are, and who eventually wins. We’ll also see if Jeff wears the same duck-egg blue V-neck sweater to his third reunion in a row, and whether Lisi’s grooming standards are a result of poor suitcase packing or genuine lack of effort.

Survivor Fiji: week 12

Here’s some advice, Boo:
When Dreamz sayz you’re talking crap
It’s time to shut up.

The worst part about tonight’s episode was that Mookie isn’t allowed to say anything from the jury box, so we don’t know if he’s worked out that Alex betrayed him. I still don’t know if Dreamz worked it out either; at one point he was standing there with a hand splayed out in front of himself and a very confused look on his face saying, "I’m trying to do the math quick." Since he was only using one hand and there were eight votes to be counted I think he was going to be there a while. Let’s just say the camera crew didn’t waste any film by hanging around until he figured it out.

Alex, meanwhile, was operating in ‘ninja mode’. This consisted of pretending to be asleep so that he could hear what people were saying. The obvious flaw in his plan was that it would only work if people talked within his range of hearing. Despite the odds they actually did. Entirely in keeping with the odds all he heard was Earl, Yau-Man and Cassandra in violent agreement that they would vote out Alex next and Boo after that.

The reward challenge can be summed up in the words "Try not to get food poisoning or catch a communicable disease." Various lumps of roast pork were hanging from ropes in the hot tropical sun. Survivors had their hands tied behind their backs and had to use just their teeth to rip off large chunks of the meat, then run back to a table and dump the meat on their plate. With everyone using their mouths on the same targets someone was bound to end up with at least one form of hepatitis. Several of them picked up meat they’d dropped in the dirt, and Stacey is going to have some nasty bruises from trying to crack the pork open like a pinata using her face as a weapon.

Frankly I didn’t think Boo would be able to resist the urge to just stand there and eat, but at the end of five minutes he had the heaviest plate with Yau-Man and Dreamz close behind. The three of them got to go white water rafting with a bloke who looked just like George Speight, while the losers had to try and use cold seawater to wash the grease and roast pig detritus out of their hair. No NEW! Olay Ribbons this week.

It was an hour and a half helicopter ride to the rafting location. Everyone had to wear headsets with microphones, so they all had to listen to Boo’s non-stop stream of verbal consciousness. See Dreamz, that’s an example of a soliloquy. It certainly wasn’t a conversation because everyone else was sitting there gritting their teeth and wishing he would just shut up so they could enjoy the ride. Same for the boat trip down the river. And probably on the flight home again. The horror, the horror.

The trip included a picnic lunch and letters from home. Yau-Man’s son apparently got six As and a B in algebra on his report card. He would have preferred his son to get 6a + b("Spanish or something") but he still seemed fairly proud. Dreamz got a letter from his sister that made him cry. Her grammar and punctuation probably would have made me cry too, but Dreamz said he was touched by something she said which was allegedly profound. The most profound news in Boo’s letter was that his Daddy’s horses are eating well.

Earl got sent to Exile Island, which he was very, very happy about since it gave him a second clue to the re-hidden immunity idol. He reckons he only needs two clues to find it, but we didn’t see him even looking for it let alone finding it. We did however get a single camera shot featuring two snakes at the same time, which is the first real evidence that there’s more than one out there. Jeff promised thousands of poisonous sea snakes. Why hasn’t anyone been bitten yet?

Boo’s extra reward for winning was a leg-up in the immunity challenge. Literally. Everyone except Boo had to wear themselves out digging through a patch of sand looking for three paddles, with the first two people to find all three going through to the final round. Boo already had his paddles - which actually turned out to be steps - in the nice purple drawstring bag he’d been given for winning reward. The only others to find any steps at all were the well-fed Dreamz and Yau-Man, and the utterly desperate Alex.

In the final they had to use the steps to climb up a power pole sticking out of the water with a flag pole sticking out of the top of that. Alex nearly won without even using the steps, but Boo’s combination of a full stomach, fresh arms and the comfort that his Daddy’s horses have been eating well was first to the top. He celebrated the win by holding the flag pole with one arm and waving his other fist around in the air while roaring. Luckily the camera helicopter didn’t get too close, because his resemblance to King Kong on top of the Empire State Building was already convincing enough.

By winning immunity, Boo put Alex’s head squarely on the chopping block. Yau-Man did a little piece to camera about how he feels very safe and can afford to keep the immunity idol for another week at least. You could hear the cheers from the editing suite as Alex the ninja chose Yau-Man as the person he would try to convince Stacey, Cassandra and Boo to vote out that night.

My vote for funniest scene of the episode goes to the bit where Earl spotted Alex a little away from the camp trying to win over Stacey. Earl told Boo to go and break up the conversation, and this is how it went:

Boo: Stacey, I think everybody wants to talk to you when you're finished over here.
Stacey: Who is 'everybody'?
Boo: Everybody besides you and Alex.

It was great TV because for a while there it looked like Alex might have pulled it off. Even better was Stacey totally sucking up to Cassandra and Dreamz, the two people who a couple of weeks ago were beneath her contempt. Cassandra has quietly become quite the little power broker over the last few weeks. She knows that Earl and Yau-Man are looking to take to each other to the final two along with some who isn’t a threat to them, and while they’ve already made a promise to her I don’t think it’s one they can afford to keep if they want to win.

Either way, she’s possibly lost Alex’s vote now. Her alliance dutifully voted for him, along with the Earl and Yau-Man. Boo also voted for Alex, although that might have just been a fluke since nobody seemed to bother briefing him. He’ll be voted off as soon as he fails to win immunity so his opinion doesn’t matter. Either that or everyone was afraid that engaging him in conversation would result in another soliloquy.

Survivor Fiji: week 11

A word to the wise:
Remember past actions; they
Foretell the future.

That they do indeed, Alex, and this week was very much a case of your past actions biting you hard in the backside. Oh, and thanks for dictating this week’s Haiku.

So much of the episode was devoted to Mookie And Alex scheming with each other that I’m just going to use the acronym MAA to save keystrokes. It started out with MAA’s past actions towards Dreamz – and vice versa – coming to their entirely foreseeable conclusions. MAA were mad because he hadn’t come to apologise and explain that it’s just part of the game. Dreamz can’t understand why they don’t want to play with him anymore, even though he betrayed them and lied to them and voted for Mookie. He went to try and explain that they all got outsmarted the night before - which was exactly what they wanted him to do - and they turned on him for turning on them. The funniest part was Dreamz lying while attempting to make MAA believe that he hadn’t turned on them, then admitting that he’d voted for Mookie, but still absolutely insisting he was on their side.

The other person who hasn’t learned anything is Stacey. In the early days at Moto while she was in the majority she treated Dreamz and Cassandra appallingly, giving Cassandra the coffee dregs and laughing at Dreamz for thinking it was instant. Fate did its thing, and she hasn't been in a secure alliance since the reshuffle in week six. Yet the first thing she did this week on return to camp was gloat about MAA being unnumbered and declare "They’ll be lucky if they get fed." That was too hypocritical to be funny, although the night-vision camera made her eyes look totally evil as she said it, which was rather amusing.

This week’s Reward Challenge was brought to us by the good folk in Olay’s marketing department. Survivors had to play lacrosse in a mud pit, so they were good and dirty by the time the randomly selected green team of Stacey, Earl, Dreamz and Alex beat the orange team. Their prize, along with a night at a luxury spa resort, was a very nicely presented basket of the NEW! Olay Ribbons body washes range which comes in Aloe Lotion ribbons, Jojoba Butter ribbons and Almond Creme ribbons. It’s NEW! And it’s from Olay. And it’s called Ribbons. And all the Survivors were desperate to win it so it must be good.

Stacey is the only babe left on the show, so luckily for both the producers and Olay’s marketing department she was on the winning team and was happy to do a slow strip down to her bikini in the resort's outdoor shower. She spent several minutes applying NEW! Olay Ribbons body wash to a loofa while holding the bottle label-side out, then rubbing NEW! Olay Ribbons body wash all over herself and moaning "Olé! Olé!" (no, I'm not kidding.) We also had to watch Earl picking dried mud out of his armpit hair. At least Dreamz now smells like apples and strawberries, for which everyone seems grateful.

Boo injured his knee so badly during the challenge they had to call out a medic who – luckily for him but oddly for the tropics – was wearing gumboots. He helped Boo stand up and there was a distinctly audible and utterly revolting click as the knee snapped back into place. Lucky for Boo he was apparently fine and quite happy to finish the challenge. Unlucky for Boo he was on the losing team and got sent to Exile Island for a night, although that had the bonus of getting a clue to where MAA's Immunity Idol has been reburied. Hmm, if you had to choose the person out of Boo, Cassandra, Yau-Man or Mookie who would be least likely to understand the clue and find the turtle before you got a chance, who would you pick? Smart choice, Earl.

Alex spent the entire reward trying to, quote, "wiggle my way back into this alliance," which was strange considering he's never been part of that alliance to start with. His efforts were a complete failure, especially when he tried to convince Earl to vote out Mookie next. Yeah, that’s a great way to prove that you’re trustworthy.

Back at camp, MAA got the idea of going through Yau-Man’s bag to see if he had the other immunity idol. They thought they were so smart when they found it. They thought it was a big strategic win for them. They thought they’d be able to call him out publicly at Tribal Council and make him look like a snake to the rest of his alliance. They thought they’d be able to get Yau-Man’s friends to all suddenly change their vote. They didn’t seem to think it was strange that there was one camera crew focused on them, and another camera crew focused on the nearby bushes. Yep, Stacey and Cassandra had been having a little pow wow of their own right near where MAA decided to hatch their evil plans and it was only Stacey standing on a stick which gave away their position, not the aforementioned camera crew.

MAA ran off down the beach in a paranoid frenzy to confront Yau-Man. They were out of breath and puffing by the time they got there, which took some of the impact off their carefully rehearsed line "We know you have the idol. Do you want to tell the group yourself or do you want us to do it?" Yau-Man just looked at them, shrugged his shoulders, smiled and said "You guys do what you think you need to do."

Yau-Man is so smart. He just moseyed back to camp and told the others that MAA had admitted going through the bags and then tried to blackmail him when they found the idol. In the horror of wondering whether MAA had been through their own bags none of them reacted to the idol news at all.

The immunity reward was a game of Battleship where everyone had to pick three adjacent squares on a grid, tell Jeff in secret, and then try to hit everyone else’s positions. Dreamz dropped the first bomb: out of 25 squares to choose from he hit one of his own and put himself a third of the way out of the game. Cassandra was next and did exactly the same thing! Stacey wasted a chance by bombing a square that had already been declared empty but somehow managed to win anyway, proving Earl’s point that the immunity challenges are all about luck not strength.

MAA were still mouthing off and threatening that if they were going down they were bringing hell down with them. Um, according to conventional wisdom Hell is already down. We know what you mean.

Boo came up with a crazy idea of half his group voting for Mookie and half for Alex. It was unclear what a deliberately tied vote was meant to achieve, and Earl expressed some well-placed fears that the plan was too mentally challenging for some of them to cope with (he didn’t name names but their initials might be Boo and Dreamz).

Tribal Council didn't go as well for MAA has they'd expected. Alex stated baldly that last week the snakes and rats came out, and then Mookie played his trump card by announcing how he knows that Yau-Man has the other immunity idol. A clearly stunned Jeff finished off the job of pointing out what an awful betrayal of trust that is, even to the point of highlighting MAA’s hypocrisy at complaining about snakes and rats.

Dreamz, true to form, blabbed that his alliance was planning to split the vote. Alex, true to form, used the information to save himself by voting for Mookie to make sure there was no tie. And Mookie, true to form, doesn’t seem to have done the math and clicked that Alex voted with the others.

A word to the wise, Alex: Remember past actions; they foretell the future. And methinks your past actions foretell you getting voted out very soon.

Survivor Fiji: week 10

And the winner is...
Earl! For Best Actor in a
Comedy/Drama

This week’s episode was all about the few hours from the end of the Immunity Challenge until after the tribe had spoken, so I’m going to skip over much of the first forty minutes, highlights of which included:

• Dreamz trying to construct whole sentences in recognisable English to explain why he voted for Michelle when he hates Stacey so much;
• Mookie trying to have a rational strategy discussion with Dreamz and eventually giving it up as a lost cause;
• Alex trying to get Mookie to share the immunity idol with him and eventually giving it up as a lost cause; and
• Boo trying to get on Earl’s good side and not realising it’s a lost cause.

The reward challenge was the one where each person who answers a question correctly gets to smash something representing another person in a none-too-subtle way of proving you want them out. The first layer of fun is in the catty nature of the questions, such as "Who would you be least likely to invite home for dinner?" (correct answer; Boo) and "Who smells the worst?" (correct answer; Dreamz).

The game was doubly cruel to Stacey. Not only is she the person nobody wants to see again (unanimously) and the person who others feel has most wasted this opportunity, but she was the first person knocked out of the game. It was hard to tell whether was more upset by the home truths or by being denied the chance to smash anyone else’s tiles in retribution.

Cassandra got every question right, winning a night on a luxury yacht and the chance to take three other people. She won because she’s politically smart, and she proved it by choosing to take Boo and Dreamz to bribe them into her alliance, and Yau-Man because he’s worked hard and deserves a break. Oh, and because he’s really smart and knew without being told that he was there to help brainwash Dreamz and Boo, even though that task would require very, very little soap to complete.

Poor Dreamz. Everyone knows he can’t be trusted with a secret because, as Alex so tactfully put it, he gets really honest. He promised the three other Horsemen (yes they’re all still carrying on with that rot) not to tell Cassandra about the idol they found. To be fair to him, technically he didn’t tell Cassandra; he told Cassandra and Earl and Yau-Man.

There needs to be a "Nobel Prize for Politics and Acting" just for Earl. Dreamz blurted out the news about the idol and Earl pretended not to believe him. True to form Dreamz kept on blabbing fact after fact to try and prove his credibility. And the look on Earl’s face as he said "What do you mean, it’s a turtle?" was just brilliant. It takes a lot of brains to play that dumb. And no, that’s not what Dreamz is doing.

Stacey desperately wanted – needed – to win the Immunity Challenge. She held on for a long time, but couldn’t beat Yau-Man in an endurance test that favoured those with strong arms and little feet.

The next few minutes was a mess of nine people trying to arrange how to vote and not be voted out. On one side was Alex’s alliance with Edgardo and Mookie. On the other side was Earl’s alliance with Yau-Man, Cassandra and now Boo. Floating in between and spreading disinformation in both camps were Stacey and Dreamz as the two least popular and most powerful on the beach, each desperately trying to prove they can be trusted by blowing the other alliance’s secrets. Yeah, that’s how to make people trust you.

Mookie was still furious at Cassandra for sending him to Exile Island two days earlier and wanted to punish her. But for some reason his preferred order to vote out the others is Earl then Boo then Yau-Man. And he wants to vote out Earl first because he thinks Earl has the idol. I’m going to assume that he’s assuming that Earl will assume they don’t know he’s got the idol so he won’t use it and that’s how they’ll vote him out even though he’s got the idol. Something like that, anyway. It didn’t make sense to me either.

Eventually – and it really did take an unforgivable amount of time - both alliances realised that targeting the person with immunity was perhaps a risky move, so we had a few more minutes of both sides changing who they were going to vote for, depending on the latest reports from Dreamz and Stacey.

Tribal Council was one of the best ever, and I’d love to know how many cameras they had to capture each look on each person’s face. At least one of those cameras was busy capturing a shot of the jury from behind, which necessitated a lot of pixelation to cover up Lisi’s bum crack.

Stacey and Dreamz (acting separately but with the same intent) had both convinced Alex that he’d been targeted for elimination, so he took the plunge and used Mookie’s precious immunity idol. Earl and his alliance managed to look worried. Mookie looked shattered that the idol was gone. Edgardo couldn’t keep the stupid grin off his face.

True to habit, Jeff had cunningly arranged the ballot papers so that he could read them out in the most ratings-grabbing order. Cassandra got the first three votes and looked worried. Earl and Yau-Man looked sombre. Boo looked like he normally does.

Then came a vote for Mookie from Dreamz, who thought he was voting with Earl’s tribe but had actually been left out of the last few plan changes. It’s going to be fun next week watching how he responds now that it’s clear he’s lost everyone’s trust, and whether he’ll understand how he brought that upon himself.

Finally came five votes in a row for Edgardo. It might have just been the editing, or it really might have taken him that long to work it out, but he kept grinning like an idiot for several second before it sunk in that he was a goner. Mookie was furious the idol had been wasted. Alex was horrified that the idol had been wasted and that he’s only got Mookie left on his side. Cassandra and Stacey both looked relieved. Earl and Yau-Man relaxed and looked smug.

Jeff just looked bemused, especially when he announced that the surrendered idol will be hidden again and new clues left on Exile Island. Perhaps Mookie won’t be so mad next time he gets sent there. Or perhaps the ad for next week was serious when it showed him going through Earl’s bags looking for the other one. How funny that Dreamz’s Lord of the Rings analogy about the idol being ‘precious’ was so accurate, and how unsurprising that he was referring to the movie not the book. Not that Dreamz would have known to call it an analogy. And Alex wasn’t really listening when he said it so perhaps it was a soliloquy, too.

Survivor Fiji: week 9

"Not a good tree mail."
You just don’t watch this show much,
Do you Cassandra.

There simply is no such thing as a good tree mail. Well, it’s really more the crappy "poems" that come with tree mail that are the problem. (I do occasionally wonder what became of Pam Ayres; now we know.) This week we had four separate crappy "poems" inflicted on us, which surely breaches Fiji’s Charter of Human Rights.

The first one told everyone to pack up their personal belongings and paddle to Exile Island. They were not allowed to take any tools, flints or rewards. The scene had started with some loving camera shots of Moto’s bed, couch, crockery, coffee and toiletries just to remind us of what they were leaving behind. At the time it seemed like just an excuse to play some more wacky luau music, but it turned out to have a purpose. More on that later.

The note was very explicit about what they could take with them, but when they got to Exile Island there was nobody there to check their luggage, not even Jeff. Well, a few cameramen but we’re all supposed to pretend they’re not there. The person most conspicuously absent from Ravu’s boat was Lisi, and yet nobody on Moto bothered to ask where she was. They clearly didn’t care.

The look-out tower housed this week’s second note, along with new purple buffs for everyone. The note advised that the merge, which even Dreamz could see coming, has now happened and they are one tribe. It also told them to paddle back to Moto’s camp where they will all be living from now on. For Boo, Cassandra and Stacey this meant not having to experience life without a decent shelter and plentiful food. For Edguardo, Alex and Dreamz it meant a return to the good life. Mookie kept sooking about how he’s the only one who’s never lived there and slept in the bed. Either he doesn’t remember building the shelter along with everyone else on the first day, or he’s trying to garner more sympathy and therefore more pillows.

Which brings us nicely to the third note. It was sitting in the old Moto camp on top of the single set of fishing gear, the two pots, the one flint and the bare ground. While the contestants were paddling out to Exile Island the camp was totally cleaned out. There’s no shelter, no bedding, no food, no coffee and no toiletries. Nada. And we at home know exactly what’s missing because we got that little inventory at the start.

The one thing everyone – except Boo – understood was that it’s now or never for alliances. The Ravu boys each had people from their old alliances who they were supposed to target for membership of a new group. Dreamz was to win over Cassandra, Mookie was to work on Yau-Man and Michelle, while Alex was going to sweet talk Stacey. Apparently Edguardo doesn’t have any friends.

The crazy thing is that they keep referring to themselves as "The Four Horsemen". I wonder what they’ll call themselves when there’s eight members of their alliance if they all succeed in their missions? I wonder if they really thought that name through. I wonder which one sees himself as Pestilence, which as War, which as Famine and which as Death.

The names Alex and Edguardo probably use to best represent Mookie and Dreamz are Dumb and Dumber. Before leaving Ravu they grilled Mookie about whether they could trust him as the keeper of the idol, and reiterated their plan not to tell Dreamz about it yet because he couldn’t be trusted not to blab to Cassandra. It turns out Mookie can’t be trusted not to blab to Dreamz.

Alex witnessed the announcement with barely contained fury. Smooth as ever he managed to twist "You can’t be trusted" into "You just get really honest" when Dreamz quite naturally asked why they didn’t tell him at the time. As much as I love to pay out on him, the wounded look on Dreamz’ face was a bit heart-wrenching. And he got really honest in his next one-on-one to the camera pointing out how and why he doesn’t trust the other Horsemen any more.

The only person not frantically working on new alliances was Boo, who is planning to sit back, let things shake out and then take a leadership role with whichever group wins. Unfortunately for Boo, he was the top of the "first to go" list that came out of every clandestine deal-making huddle. Fortunately for Boo the Immunity Challenge shook things up again in yet another twist. And fortunately for us we didn’t have to see the tree mail notifying them of challenge.

Before it started, each person had to reach into a bag and pull out at random either an orange or green tile. This is where it gets a bit confusing. They are all still in the new purple Bula Bula tribe, but the new green and orange groups had to compete against each other for immunity and a reward. The winners would get a feast, and the losers would be punished with not just a trip to Tribal Council but another mystery note, which is a cruel punishment but not all that unusual this episode.

As twists go it was a good one but as challenges go it was unoriginal. Teams had to paddle their boat through a course, collect bags of stuff and solve a puzzle. True to the Milton-Bradley / Mousetrap / ‘For Ages 8 to 80’ spirit of the whole thing, the bags had to be retrieved from what others might have described as a coil but looked to me like the top off a big Totem Tennis(TM) pole.

Both teams reached the first one at the same time. Jeff called out that there’s a strategic technique needed to get the bags down. He need not have wasted his breath for our sake because that was obvious by the way Yau-Man was retrieving the second one for his team by the time Stacey and then Dreamz each struggled before Alex finally took over and worked it out.

Too little too late however, so the team of Alex, Michelle, Dreamz, Stacey and Mookie were forced to watch as Jeff handed over a big plate of raw steak and veggies to the winners (which is apparently their reward, even though it had been sitting out in the tropical sun for a few hours). The losers also had to brace themselves for the final note, which simply read:

You will not be going back to camp,
There will be no time to strategize.
We’re heading to Tribal Council right now.

The only question I really wanted Jeff to ask was "Lisi, you’ve been in a luxury resort for three days now; why have you still not brushed your hair?" Unfortunately his questioning consisted solely of "[Person A] give me a reason to get rid of [Person B]." Once again, Alex’s smooth tongue won the day. One by one he simply answered that he had no reason for getting rid of any of the people Jeff named until it got to Michelle, in which instance he said "I don’t know Michelle as well as I know any of the other people here." It sent a clear message to the others that leader Alex had tagged Michelle for elimination. Even Dreamz understood it, although apparently Alex also should have explained to him that ‘Michelle’ is not spelt ‘Mechelle’.

Either way, yet another girl is gone. We don’t know whether the orange and green teams will continue, but I’m sure the next tree mail will explain it in excruciating rhyme and metre.

Survivor Fiji: week 8

Memo to Lisi:
Dreamz may be a bit slow, but
You’re an idiot.

Seriously, Lisi, you’re a fool of the highest magnitude. By the time tonight’s episode went to air in Australia the entire series was finished in the U.S., so you’ve already seen the difference between your perception of reality and actual reality. Well, the editor’s version at least. Let’s go back over some of your finest moments so you can relive the shame.

The episode started with a recap of last week and your decision to tell Edguardo and Alex that the individual immunity idol – the thing that gives you protection through to the final five - is buried in your camp right where you all sleep. I understand that you’re in an alliance with them, and that you think you can trust them, but it’s a million dollars at stake.

And it turns out you really shouldn’t trust Edguardo and Alex. They filled Mookie in on the clues, and the three of them managed to dig up the idol while you and Dreamz slept on in blissful ignorance (which is virtually a permanent state for both of you). They dug a foot-deep hole in hard ground a meter from where you dozed and you didn’t even stir. You stayed in the same foetal position, backside facing the camera. It was an unflattering angle because you were wearing light-coloured pants and had previously sat on something dirty, making it look like you’d soiled yourself. Embarrassing for you, funny for us.

You’ve done some one-on-one camera interviews that were cringe-worthy, but the best of them was when you recapped the story of waking up to find Mookie playing in the dirt near your feet. We all know that he was filling the hole back in to hide the fact that they found the idol and have no intention of even telling you about it, let along sharing. Your version of the story went as follows: "This morning Mookie was trying to be a little discreet, flipping leaves and playing with the ground, and I was like, ‘What, idol digging?’ and he had no choice but to say ‘Um, yeah’ and I’m like ‘Dude, you’re gonna have to get up really early in the morning to fool an old cat like me. What’s wrong with you?"

There may actually be something wrong with Mookie, because no normal person would have been able to keep such a straight face while diligently helping you re-dig the now empty idol hole, let alone when Edguardo walked up and said "I already checked that part. It’s not there." Hey, he was telling the truth!

The reward challenge, as you may remember, involved learning to dance the traditional Fijian Meke and then performing for the locals. You were hopeless, although it’s hard to tell whether that’s because you’ve got no rhythm or because you don’t take the challenges seriously and don’t see the point of getting psyched up to try and win. At least you had the sense to only express that view to the camera, not your tribe mates. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't. Surely you didn't!

Earl was the star of the challenge, drawing on his inner Michael Jackson to get some cool black-dude dance moves happening and laughing at Boo’s "white guy thang". He needs to remember that Michael Jackson isn’t black any more, and hasn’t been a winner for a long time.

Moto is undeniably strong at collecting puzzle pieces, undoing knots and raising flags but it turns out they’re pretty good at dancing too. I’d love to have had subtitles during the judges’ deliberations at the end, but they were definitely not needed to understand the looks of disgust on their faces during Ravu’s lame effort. Jeff told them that authenticity would be one of the judging criteria, so it's inexplicable why Dreamz threw in a back flip at the end. I didn't see any Fijians doing back flips.

Lisi, the look of disgust on your face when you got sent to Exile Island again gets my award for Cat’s Bum Mouth of the series thus far. Earl explained that they chose you so nobody else in that tribe gets any clues as the location of the immunity idol. It obviously hasn’t occurred to him that you’d be so stupid as to tell anyone the clues you’ve already got. It probably hasn’t even occurred to him that the Ravu camp idol has already been found, since you’re the only one in your tribe to have seen the clues, and he knows you’re too stupid and lazy to have found it on your own.

Before you accuse me of being harsh, you’re so stupid you took shelter during a lighting storm in the lookout tower, the highest point on Exile Island. If it was just you I wouldn’t care, but you had the cameraman up there with you and he was holding a big chunk of metal. That makes you a dangerous idiot.

Yau-Man is exceedingly smart, so it’s lucky you’ve never been on the same tribe as him because it would make the comparison that much more stark. Ravu keep laughing at what a weedy little old man he is, but brains will beat brawn any day. Brains will also beat braggarts. Edguardo will never again refer publicly to his supposed archery skills after making a statement like "I never say I’m pretty good at stuff, but I’m pretty good at archery" prior to the challenge, and then not even reaching the target - let alone hitting it - when his tribe needed him to at least force a tie-breaker.

Teams took turns with a blow dart, then a spear, then a bow and arrow to hit targets. Contestants competed in the same order each time, and every time Yau-Man’s shot for Moto was so good – and Edguardo’s shot as the last person for Ravu was so bad – that Earl didn’t even need to have his turn. Yau-Man did simple but logical things like finding the balance point of the spear and choosing the straightest arrow in the quiver. Lisi, you did simple and illogical things like laughing at the failings of your own tribe.

I use the phrase "your own tribe" because you are part of that tribe whether you like it or not, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t. You described "them" as losers and a sinking ship, including one pronunciation of ‘loser’ which you extended to five syllables. You probably thought that was funny at the time. I wonder if you still found it funny watching the episode at home?

At least you weren’t a total hypocrite, telling the entire tribe that you want to be voted out because they are all losers who would lose the next challenge and you’d get sent back to Exile Island again. There’s no ‘i’ in team but there’s two in Lisi.

And yet, ten minutes before Tribal Council, you decided to hang around after all. Why? Because you wanted another chance. You’d changed your mind. You’d decided to try and hang in there, maybe, sort of. All the way through Tribal Council your best – nay, only – defence was that you wanted another chance. You wanted the others to vote for Dreamz even though he really wants to stay. You accused Dreamz of quitting halfway through challenges but then couldn’t give a single example to prove your case. You don’t even understand the concept of a Yes or No question, so I’ll explain it. When someone says "Do you want to be here? Yes or No?" you are supposed to say either 'Yes' or 'No'. "Can’t I catch a break?" and "So now I’m at fault for being honest and saying I have to think for a minute!" are not correct answers, although the latter is at least true.

The two funniest non-Lisi moments of the whole episode were:

1. Rocky running up the stairs to the Tribal Council chambers like he was out front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the stirring da-daaa-daaaaaa of Gonna Fly Now was playing the background; and
2. Dreamz attempting to pronounce ‘soliloquy’ again, and saying ‘recipitate’ instead of ‘resuscitate’. Honey, stick to words of less that four syllables.

Last week Edguardo and Alex justified getting rid of Rocky because loyalty is more important than strength when the merge is nigh. This week they decided that mental stability is even more important. Since you’re loyal but unstable, and not a very smart game player (Edguardo’s description, not mine) you’re useless. Now you even know that the vote against you was unanimous.

As Jeff said at the end, if there’s one truth in this game it’s that;
"You have to want to
Win to make it to the end."
Suck on that, Lisi.

Survivor Fiji: week 7a

It's the Wimbledon
Men's Final. No Survivor.
Early night for me!

Survivor Fiji: week 7

A jury is made
Up of twelve good men and true;
And, it seems, Rocky.

Week seven, and still not even a hint of romance. Normally by now one of the buffed young guys would have been helping one of the blonde young girls stay warm at night by snuggling up to her in the shelter. The only three women left are all on the same tribe and none of them are blonde. Also the only buffed young guy on that tribe is Boo, and they all seem to value their dignity too much to go there.

The other tribe does have Lisi, who has sort of dirty yellow hair (where her last home bleach job grew out) and is young, and she is surrounded by buffed young guys. Trouble is she’s just as buffed as they are, as evidenced by the ease with which she carried three pint glasses of beer during the reward challenge. More on that later.

Actually there almost was some romance when Edguardo sat next to Rocky on a log and tried to talk strategy. The answer to Edguardo’s question "What do you think?" was answered "I think you should [expletive and pixelation of Rocky’s potty mouth] push over unless you want to make out with me." No romance there.

No, the real romance this week was at Moto’s camp. Earl once again got the rest of the tribe away so that Yau-Man could look for the immunity idol. Digging with a pick axe and shovel that were just laying around the Moto camp was much easier than trying to do it at the Ravu camp with just a machete, and he soon had a rather cute turtle necklace in his hands. He was a bit excited. Actually he was very excited. He started kissing the turtle and didn’t stop. He may have actually licked it. Not a good look.

In his excitement he also slipped from talking about the immunity idol in the plural form ‘we’ (which featured so heavily in his negotiations with Earl) into the singular form ‘me’ (for example, "This looks so good on me!") Their plan for sharing the idol is that if they hear Earl is about to be voted out he gets it, and if it’s Yau-Man’s scrawny neck on the chopping block he keeps it. Sounds fair. I just hope they put all this in writing because I really can’t see either of them wanting to share when the going gets tough and a million dollars is at stake.

Yau-Man is still a winner in my book, though. The reward challenge involved throwing flaming balls at targets. For once teams had to set a flag on fire instead of lighting a fire to raise a flag. Gee, where do they keep coming up with all these totally original ideas?

The buffed young men of Moto all laughed when it was Yau-Man’s turn. Mookie was especially cruel in him imitation of Yau-Man’s wobbly throwing arm. He might want to remember that Yau-Man is smart and knows his physics, as proven on day one when all the brawn in the camp couldn’t open a sealed timber box by hitting it with heavy things, while Yau-Man casually dropped it on its corner – the weakest point - and smashed it open. Naturally Yau-Man’s shot landed in just the right spot and Mookie ended up looking stupid and embarrassed. Mookie could easily be the Ralph Macchio to Yau-Man’s Mr Miyagi if he were more open to learning from little old smart guys.

Mookie was happy again when Ravu finally achieved their first win for the season. Reward was a trip to a games arcade on a nearby island with all the beer and hot dogs they could eat. The Kava Bowl (that’s seriously one of the best business names I’ve seen in ages) was true to its promise and featured intoxicating substances and ten pin bowling among other delights such as Foosball, billiards, video golf, unlimited hot dogs and the ultimate reward luxury of a nice clean china toilet to throw up in.

With his camp’s idol already located, Earl didn’t even bother reading the next location clue when he got to Exile Island. It was his third trip there so he figures it’s now his, and he spent the time productively designing a logo for his new tourism resort called Earl Island (sorry, that’s nowhere near is good as The Kava Bowl). Earl works in advertising so I was expecting a slightly more integrated above-the-line campaign than just a single televised product placement and no other media presence. At the very least I thought he’d avoid an obvious mistake like forgetting to give the website address or the reservations phone number.

Yau-Man also spent a productive afternoon creating a decoy immunity idol out of half a coconut and some yellow paint before burying it where the clues say to look. If Boo gets sent to Exile Island and manages to a) read the clues and b) work out what they mean, he might go digging and find it. I’m singling out Boo because he’s the only one in that tribe stupid enough to fall for it.

I should probably just stop for a second here and confess that Boo isn’t stupid just because he can’t tell left from right. Some of the worst navigational mistakes in my marriage have occurred because I sometimes do the same thing. To my credit though, I’d have self-corrected if my darling hubby was screaming "No, LEFT! LEFT! LEFT! THE OTHER LEFT!"

To explain why left and right is important you need to know that this week’s immunity challenge involved blindfolded contestants making their way across a course to smash pinatas (charmingly made out of a human skulls) and retrieve the obligatory puzzle pieces, guided by a team mate yelling out directions. Michelle did an excellent job calling for Moto - even falling off the look-out tower in her excitement, all of which was brilliantly captured on camera - until it was Boo’s turn. She quite possibly wanted to cave his skull in with the traditional Fijian war club when her repeated screams of "LEFT! The other way! Your left!" were ignored.

She was so hoarse by the time he got it right (pardon the pun) that Yau-Man could hardly hear her when it was his turn. Boo told her to swap out, got to the top of the look-out platform and only then remembered that he was blind for some reason that was never explained (although as I said, there’s been no romance - of any kind - this season). Boo couldn't even see Yau-Man let alone tell him where to go. Now do you forgive me for being so harsh on him?

I’ve perhaps been a little bit harsh on Lisi, too. After losing the immunity challenge for the seventh week in a row the mood at Ravu was low. Rocky did his usual temper tantrum. Alex and Edguardo did the math and figured that with the merge and the switch to individual immunity challenges so close, loyalty is more valuable than physical strength. They decided to keep Lisi since she still believes her original alliance is solid and is therefore easy to manipulate (wow, she must have been embarrassed sitting home these last few weeks and learning what those boys said about her behind her back!) They even manipulated her into telling them where the Ravu immunity idol is buried. And she fell for it!

Dreamz announced that he knowz Rocky and knowz that he don’t really meanz what he sayz an all that. Dreamz also believez that Rocky knowz that hiz head'z on the choppin block tonight. Oh Dreamz, you iz sadly mistaken and you do not know Rocky at all if you honestly believe that.

Lisi was also sadly mistaken. As Jeff read her name out on the first vote she did a big fake-terrified nail-biting pantomime that wasn’t nearly as funny as she probably thought it was. The stunned look on her face as the second vote was read out, again featuring her name, was much funnier than she could have ever intended.

Unfortunately she had a good reason to look smug by the end when Rocky was announced as the seventh person voted off and the first member of the jury. She wouldn’t look so smug if she knew that her description of having had a ‘spiritual enlightenment’ on Exile Island was accessorised in the editing suite by a ‘bo-ing!!’ comedy sound effect straight out of America’s Funniest Home Video. She’s going to look like an even bigger fool next week. More on that later...

Survivor Fiji: week 6

"Drop your buffs!" said Jeff.
It’s Cassandra’s lucky day
And don’t she know it!

To this day I don’t know why a circle of brightly printed lycra is called a buff, but it is in Survivor land and it shows which tribe each person belongs to. "Drop your buffs!" means you’re about to get a new one and, ergo, a new tribe. If you’re really keen they’re available for sale on the CBS website. I checked a few seasons ago and then came to my senses and resisted the urge.

This week the order to drop buffs came only minutes into the episode, before the credits had even run. To ensure an even spread - and the complete eradication of all alliances - a person from each tribe stepped forward and then had to pick someone from the other tribe, who then also had to pick someone from the opposite tribe to them. All of Anthony’s high school nightmares came true as he was the last Ravu person to be assigned to a tribe. He managed not to cry, sort of.

Lisi was the last one left not on a team, which was a smart move on everyone’s part because she’s just the most awful person out there this year. In addition to the physical resemblance to Fergie the Duchess of York, Lisi is every bit as awkward and bumbling and inappropriate. She stupidly got it into her head that she’d be going home as a result, and even seemed rather pleased by that. She was not grateful to learn she’s still in the game, and distinctly displeased to be sent to Exile Island instead. Maybe the snake will get her.

The reward challenge for the week was a very simple one. Edguardo and Earl played Rock Paper Scissors to determine who picked a random buff out of a bag held over Jeff’s head. Edguardo won RPS but lost big time by picking the buff that sent his team back to the resourceless Ravu beach. Another way to look at it was that everyone got a reward as there was a feast of fruit, cheese and crackers waiting at each camp on their return, and the challenge for the original Ravu members was eating slowly enough to prevent a huge upset to their unaccustomed digestive systems.

The new Ravu tribe is comprised entirely of blokes: Rocky, Mookie, Alex, Edguardo and Dreamz. The blokes are delighted that there’s no girls in their tribe. They think girls are nice to look at and touch and make out with, but they’re too stupid and delicate for that kind of tough environment and therefore just a distraction. It’s an attitude straight out of 1953. It’s like Survivor Kirribilli House.

I should point out that Anthony is on the same tribe. He’s a little more enlightened than the rest, which in their eyes makes him a big girl. He even described himself as a black male Cinderella. They left him behind to tend the fire and boil drinking water and other women's work, while they did manly things like fishing and poking crabs with sticks and hanging out on the beach. As much as I despite their attitudes, I might feel more kindly toward Anthony if he didn’t complain so much about it not being his fault that he’s a nerd. Make an effort, not an excuse.

Knowing it’s a numbers game, Alex and Edguardo quickly recruited Mookie to their alliance and informed Dreamz that he’s in with them whether he likes it or not. In probably his smartest move all series Dreamz kept his mouth shut and in the process managed not to say something stupid. Rocky seems to think he’s in the gang too, but he’s merely being tolerated because he’s more masculine than Anthony, which is the most important thing in Ravu these days.

By comparison, the greatest friction between old and new at Moto came from Stacey imploring Earl not to get into the king size bed while he’s dirty. Earl, Yau-Man and Michelle couldn’t believe their luck at the luxury. Boo was smart enough to recognise that his cosy alliance is now history, but stupid enough to still be bragging that if it weren’t for this twist he was guaranteed to win the million dollars. Cassandra brought Earl and Yau-Man hot coffee in china cups while they fished, and ‘allowed’ herself to be talked into joining the three former Ravus at Boo and Stacey’s expense. She’s been waiting for that chance a long time, and was patient enough not to blow it. Slowly slowly catchee monkey.

Moto won immunity yet again despite its new composition. Yau-Man was happy to win for the first time and even happier that a few days of decent food finally gave him the strength to carry the team flag. The six members of each tribe were tethered together and had to move through an obstacle course, testing each team’s ability to communicate with each other. The outcome really wasn’t a surprise, because a team of silver backs each trying to out-brawn the others and justify his own place at the top of the pack was never going to win.

Tribal Council was little more than an argument between Rocky and Anthony about whether standing up for oneself is manly or proof of poor social skills. Anthony was rational and articulate and claimed that he’d bitten his tongue so the tribe could remain cohesive and perhaps win a challenge. It was an impassioned speech. Unfortunately it was also an extremely poor tactic because it reminded all the blokes that they’re losers and they immediately voted him out.

The good news for Lisi is that she’s still in the game. The bad news is that on her return from Exile Island she replaces Anthony in the Ravu tribe with no equipment and five boys who don’t want her there. The good news is that if they continue their strategy of voting out the most feminine tribemate she’s safe for several weeks yet.

Survivor Fiji: week 5

Confucius (Yau-Man)
Say: Love many, trust few and
Do wrong to no-one.

Confucius (the real one), Sun Tzu and Machiavelli all had influence from beyond the grave this week as the politics and strategising heats up.

Earl joined forces with Yau-Man in the hunt for the immunity idol. Well, he deliberately got everyone else out of camp so that Yau-Man had a private chance to look for it based on the new info he got last week on Exile Island; he didn't do any actual searching himself. Between Yau-Man being such a nerdy little computer boffin, and a machete not being such a great digging tool, the opportunity was wasted. It was also unclear what direct benefit Earl will receive from his effort, although I’m sure the afore-mentioned philosophers would each have plenty to say about his tactics and Yau-Man seemed grateful.

To remind us that life there is just one big party, our first look at Moto for the week was accompanied by jaunty luau music that would be perfect had this been Survivor Hawaii. Just in case we hadn’t spotted the difference between the camps yet, Earl explained the disparity using an analogy that included The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Good Times. If there’s a future challenge based on ethnic minority television he’s got it won.

The disparity is also causing difficulties for the producers trying to come up with reward challenge prizes which will generate an enthusiastic "Yeah!" from both tribes when Jeff inevitably asks "Worth playing for?", which he has done before every reward challenge in all 14 seasons.

Tree mail brought a catalogue of prize options instead of a crappy poem (which was a reward in itself) and instructions to choose two items on the basis that the winning tribe would get both sets of goodies. Despite admitting they don’t really need any more luxuries, Moto went for toiletries and coffee. Despite some heavy-duty drooling over the chocolate cake, Ravu went for the highly practical cooking pot full of potatoes and the same set of fishing gear which Moto has now won twice.

Make that three times. The challenge was a mano a mano cross between Sumo wrestling and a pillow fight set on a platform above a mud flat. Competitors had to push each other into the mud using big cushions, with the first team to win seven bouts earning immunity. Yau-Man managed to beat Stacey, but since that was the only mixed-gender matching (and perhaps the only one where the heavier competitor lost) it was hardly worth crowing about. Actually the effort took so much out of him that he was incapable of doing much more than smile and laugh at himself for beating up on a girl.

It was to be the only bout that Ravu won, with Moto having a definite weight and strength advantage. A rematch between Rita and Cassandra presented another opportunity for Ravu since Rita simply had to sidestep and Cassy’s momentum would have sent her straight over the edge like a freight train, but Rita isn’t that smart. She wasn’t even smart enough to let go of the cushion to break her fall into the mud. Not even the second time. At least she remembered to hold her bikini top in place, although the pixelating machine wouldn't have been needed due to the mud.

Earl’s stay on Exile Island added another clue to the idol’s whereabouts, but nothing he didn’t already know. It seems like Earl wants to believe Yau-Man’s claim to have not found the idol yet but is finding it hard since the clues are so obvious. The question now is whether Yau-Man will help Earl find the idol, and who gets to keep any result of their joint effort.

At least Earl’s 24 hours on Exile Island spared him 24 hours of listening to Rita’s inane chatter. At Tribal Council she tried to justify the non-stop soliloquies as "telling little stories I think will entertain people and keep their mind off the dire situation we’re in." Hey don’t laugh, she’s right: when you’re that weak it’s hard to remember how hungry you are and at the same time quell the urge to choke someone.

Moto’s coffee fix meant they were having no trouble at all concentrating. For Lisi and Stacey this meant focussing on how best to completely ostracise the two remaining non-members of their alliance (both of whom are African American...). They teased Dreamz mercilessly for not knowing how to make coffee using a French press plunger (he thought it was instant and just added water to the spoonful of coffee in his mug then wondered why it had so many bits in it). Cassandra just got the dregs once everyone else had finished, Cinderella style. It was cruel and unnecessary, and way too high school for Alex and Edguardo’s comfort. They can see that even if Moto wins every remaining immunity challenge it will still be seven-three going into the merge, which equates to five-five if Dreamz and Cassandra change sides. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and our philosopher pals would all have plenty to say about the current situation. They wouldn’t, however, have necessarily had any more luck banging the cold logic of the numbers into Boo, Lisi and Stacey’s heads than Alex and Edguardo did. Dreamz and Cassandra have done the numbers too, although in Dreamz’s dreams Moto wins all the challenges and he doesn’t get voted out before they even get to the merge. In his dreams there's also no sudden twist rearrangement of the tribes to stuff up everyone's plans and keep the ratings up.

Ravu almost did win immunity this week in a large-scale version of Kim’s game. Yau-Man got an easy one wrong, and then Lisi fell flat on her face - both literally and figuratively - in her excitement to show him up. She’s allegedly a customer service rep on a psychic phone line, which doesn’t explain why she: a) didn’t know where the correct match up was; and b) couldn’t read her tribemates’ minds when they all non-verbally told her - and then not so non-verbally moaned "NO" - as she tried to turn over the wrong match, disqualifying her in the process.

Cassandra, true to her name, did have enough psychic ability to win for Moto after Rocky missed an easy one. He accepted responsibility for the loss, but claimed that everyone else telling him what to do was really confusing and that as a tribe they all need to learn when not to speak. No Rocky, either you don’t have enough strength of character to believe in yourself or you have enough self awareness to know better than to believe in yourself. It’s not everyone else’s fault you got it wrong.

Michelle organised a quorum of people willing to vote Anthony out, but before anyone got a chance to brief the absent Rocky on the decision he’d started lobbying to get rid of Rita with apparent success if the editing is anything to go by, which it usually isn't. At Tribal Council Rita talked about talking, which provoked much eye rolling from the boys, and Yau-Man gave the basis of this week’s haiku as his personal philosophy in answer to a question from Jeff about trusting people, which Earl was fascinated by. Nobody produced the immunity idol, and Rita became the fifth woman voted out in what is by far the most misogynistic series in Survivor history.

The ad for next week features the chilling phrase "Drop your buffs!" and what looks like a reshuffle of the teams and a random draw for who gets the good camp. Didn't see that coming did we Dreamz!

Survivor Fiji: week 4

A soliloquy
Is not an excuse to talk
When no-one listens

Mark Burnett and his fellow Survivor producers seem to have some sort of magical gag over contestants because they NEVER talk to each other during the return trip from a challenge or Tribal Council. It gives the camera crew time to get set up in camp before the recriminations start, and make sure not a juicy second is missed.

This week they must have been wishing they could gag Earl even after he was back at camp. Earl wanted a calm, rational discussion to clear the air and prevent social pressures from building to the point where someone explodes. Luckily for the ratings Rocky had plenty to say in a soliloquy at Anthony that was as illogical and sexist as it was one-sided. Apparently he’s not used to dealing with people who are emotional, unless it’s a ‘broad’ (no offence to the ladies). And (no offence to Anthony) but apparently he doesn’t deserve to be there as much as Jessica and Erica, with whom Rocky did get along even though they’re both ‘broads’ and Erica was ridiculously emotional. If they deserved to still be in the tribe more than Anthony why didn’t Rocky lobby harder to keep Jessica, and why did he lobby so hard to get rid of Erica? He finished with the words "some people got it and some people don’t". Presumably the ‘it’ about which he spoke was hypocrisy.

Poor Anthony. Apparently he got picked on in the playground as child, and here someone is picking on him in front of the whole world in the manner of a child. He assures us, however, that "If they want me off this island they’re going to have to push me off!" His performance in this week’s reward challenge suggests he’ll probably fall off before they get that chance. He couldn’t stay on the balance beam, which was enough for Ravu to lose yet again and for Moto to add a king-sized bed and a spice rack to their already impressive camp facilities.

Rocky’s reaction to losing yet again (once they were back at camp and the camera crew shouted "Action") was just as irrational and spectacular as his earlier outburst promised him capable of being. He threw coconuts, shouted, blamed Anthony – which was actually justifiable this time – walked around naked for a bit and then put on one of Rita’s many bikini tops and turned up for the next challenge in drag. Bless him.

As this episode went to air in Australia, Paris Hilton was being released from prison to home detention because she was crying a lot and has a bad rash. Papa Smurf Gary was evacuated from Moto’s camp to resort detention because he wasn’t breathing a lot and has a bad rash comprised entirely of insect bites. He’s had malaria and done a tour of ‘Nam but neither was as bad as the way his broken ribs were making him feel. Lisi’s laugh couldn’t have been helping either.

The decision that Papa Smurf was too sick to return to the game must have come through after the immunity challenge was all set up and ready to go, because in previous seasons they’d have just cancelled it and Tribal Council for the week. Instead the challenge went ahead, with a nasty little twist at the end.

This one had lots of swimming and unlocking each other from bamboo cages. Moto won of course, and then found out that they could keep either immunity OR their luxury camp, but not both. They chose luxury, so Ravu got a week off from Tribal Council and Yau-Man has an extra three days to try and dig up the immunity idol following his stay on Exile Island and receipt of the fourth clue.

Andre aka Dre aka ‘Dreamz’ is Moto’s version of James aka Boston aka Rocky. His strategic approach to their first Tribal Council was to talk at his tribe mates for over half a minute, with many references to snakes but no reference to anything intelligible about what they should do. Finally he announced his solution: "There’s two people we can afford to lose and – I ain’t pointin’ no fingers – (points at Lisi) it’s Lisi (points at Cassandra) and Cassandra." Logically what he said was correct because the double negative meant he was pointing at those two, but logic doesn’t really feature much in Dreamzland.

Lisi was bemused because she seems to have a pretty solid alliance with four of the others. Cassandra was just horrified because with Papa Smurf gone she’s the next oldest person in the tribe. Alex and Edguardo both refused to vote for Lisi and said they would therefore vote for Cassandra. Liliana – who has barely said two words on camera all season but has done a lot of bedtime massages for the buff young men in her tribe –told Cassandra that she had to vote for her to stay in good with the rest and protect her own interests. Oddly enough, nobody mentioned just getting rid of Dreamz instead.

Those who actually still watch the show will be familiar with the little moments of the local wildlife going about its day that get edited in between scenes and in the return from ad breaks. Sometimes it’s a dangerous beastie like a crocodile, sometimes it’s a little cutie like a fruit bat with big puppy eyes, and sometimes it’s a creepy crawly like a big spider. This week we had a twelve second close-up (yes, I rewound and timed it) of one snake sliding forward out of another snake’s mouth. There’s conjecture in our house that it was a snake shedding its skin, but they both had eyeballs and the one doing the regurgitating had a tongue. I don’t know how the other snake got in there. I don’t know why it suddenly wanted out. I’ve watched it too many times now and I don’t want to see anything like it ever again.

Anyway, back at Moto, Lisi and Stacey tried to convince the three boys in their alliance to vote out Liliana instead of Cassandra. The boys said it didn’t make any sense since Liliana is as strong as the boys in the challenges and Cassandra is bad at everything. What they perhaps meant is that Liliana gives really good massages and Cassandra is, like, old (for the record she’s only 42, but remember this is Hollywood).

Dreamz clearly has no idea what a soliloquy is but at Tribal Council he assured Jeff that he didn’t go off on one, which Lisi had accused him of doing. Actually he assured Jeff that he didn’t go off on a "shaquilla or whatever..." Boo laughed, but I suspect that’s just because everyone else laughed. There’s no way we’ll be hearing Boo doing scenes from Hamlet any time soon to demonstrate his extensive knowledge of English Literature.

Maybe it was a done deal before Tribal Council, or maybe what convinced people how to vote was the bit where Cassandra complemented Liliana on how strong she is and how far she’ll go in the game, but was really pointing out what a threat Liliana will be if she’s allowed to stay. Either way, the massage queen is gone (it's been all girls so far) and Cassandra lives another day. Actually if Moto keep winning challenges at this rate they won’t be back at Tribal Council for a while yet and she’ll make it onto to the jury!

Survivor Fiji: week 3

Since Smurfs have blue skin,
To what colour do they change
When they cannot breathe?

James/Boston/Rocky, who is simply being credited as Rocky these days even by Jeff, started off this week by describing his tribe as "the biggest group of losers that Survivor’s ever seen". First of all, please use the correct terminology: "the biggest group of losers in Survivor history". Second, you’re wrong: that honour goes to the Ulong tribe from Survivor Palau which only had one member by the time of the ‘merge’. They managed to disintegrate through sheer lack of spirit, whereas Ravu have the quite valid excuse of no food, no water, no shelter AND no spirit.

They do have fire now, at least. The sun finally came out long and strong enough for Michelle to get one going using Yau-Man’s spectacles and some coconut husks. They were so busy celebrating their impending survival that the fire almost went out again. I’m sure Charles Darwin would have something to say about such stupidity.

By comparison, the Moto crew decided to paint the shelter floor a nice shade of duck egg blue, ostensibly to keen the ants out (what, their little legs will stick in the wet paint?) but probably because they were just bored with eating and napping. As Boo observed, it’s "thrival" more than "survival". Just remember Boo that you are camping in the tropics with multiple axe wounds, and are thus a walking candidate for septicemia.

This week we had separate reward and immunity challenges for the first time this season. The reward challenge, with a choice of prizes on offer, was a big slip’n’slide with numbered balls suspended above it and a basketball ring at the far end. Survivors went head to head to grab a particular numbered ball, with the first one to sink it in the basket at the end winning a point for their team. Did you spot the novelty? No knots to undo, no puzzle pieces to collect and no flags to raise!

Jeff did his normal thing with the commentating, but they really should have shipped in Fiona McDonald. Remember Jackie’s sister who hosted "It’s A Knockout" in the mid-eighties? Her catch-phrase was "And he’s fall-hall-hall-en over ha ha ha". There was a lot of that. There wasn’t a lot of Ravu winning. There was a lot of pixelation when Rita’s bikini top did some slipping and sliding of its own. And there wasn’t much grief when Sylvia got sent back to Exile Island for a second stint.

Moto’s Gary has been nicknamed Papa Smurf, presumably for his blue t-shirt and shorts. He took a very heavy spill on the slip’n’slide and broke at least one rib. Back at camp they had to call out the paramedics because he could hardly breathe and was getting dizzy and vague as a result. All the paramedics could do was tell him to take some aspirin and call them in the morning if it got worse, but he really seemed to be struggling. Cassandra was so worried she was in tears. Alex was also emotional, but more in the sense that someone else has shown weakness and he’s now much less likely to be the first Moto member voted off.

Of course, Moto need to lose a challenge before they vote anyone off and that didn’t happen this week. Sylvia came back from Exile Island just in time for the long overdue return of my personal favourite, the Gross Food Challenge. Last seen in Palau with the unforgettable balut, this was a more traditional Gross Food Challenge with a range of local ‘delicacies’ such as clams, peanut worms, octopus tentacles, sea cucumber, fish eyes and - for dessert - pig snouts. Ravu should have been a certainty to win since they’re desperate for both food and a victory, and Moto all looked kind of bloated after lunch.

Rocky and Mookie both won their rounds, and Anthony and Sylvia both lost theirs and were targeted for elimination in some interesting tribal politics. There was a genuine fear that Sylvia had found the idol during her most recent stay on Exile Island and would have immunity. If the vote for Sylvia was unanimous, and if she possessed and played the immunity idol, then whomever she had voted for would have the next highest number of votes and be eliminated. To prevent that from being someone in this week’s version of his alliance, Rocky arranged for a couple of people to vote for Anthony. I’m not sure whether Rita was supposed to vote for Sylvia or Anthony, but neither of those names is spelt E-A-R-L so who knows what she was doing.

Regardless, Sylvia didn’t have the immunity idol and enough of the others managed to vote correctly for her to be sent home. Anthony, however, was a bit upset by the votes he received and the ad for next week shows him with a quivering lip of which any petulant four year old would be proud. Anthony, your team might have fire and therefore drinking water now but you can’t afford to waste precious bodily fluids on tears.