Australian Survivor, Mon, Sept 26

The promo for tonight shows Kate talking strategy with Spidey Sam and BFF Lee. Hooray – people talking strategy who aren’t already in the pretty girl alliance! Don’t think it will save Kate but good on her for having a go.
Now, if we get a scene where Jenna Louise gets to talk I’ll be even more delighted.

Back at camp after the Conner vote out the usually chipper Kate is feeling dispirited – knowing she’s next in line – but Sue tells her to buck up: “Don’t get mad; get even.” Please do, Kate – we’d love to see you take out Brooke or Flick.
Her first port of call is to go for a walk with firefighter Kylie, because no-one on the former blue tribe cares what Kylie does. They want a “Good Guys” alliance that draws in Sam.
And the “Bad Girls” (Flick, El and Brooke) want Kate gone just as bad.
Kate sketches out in the sand the tribal pyramid of power showing Sam and Lee where they stand in the game and they discuss blindsiding Nick to flush the idol. They reckon they can get Kristie, Kylie and Sue on board. Lee worries me because, here at home, we’re led to believe he’s very tight with El, and in the game we’ve seen they are friends but they don’t strategise together. Lee could well turn Kate in to the Bad Girls which won’t make much difference to Kate’s chances but it could send Sam home earlier than expected. And relying on Kylie for anything strategic seems shaky.

On the beach Brooke is squeezing Flick’s blackheads – gross! They are unmatting each other’s hair and attempting to pluck eyebrows. Aren’t these people starving? Is no-one trying to catch crabs or fish? While the beauty salon is open, Lee and Sam have a chat with Kristie about voting for Nick, interestingly, we see Lee tell the camera how much he admires Kristie for her quirkiness and resilience.
Ooh – there’s Jenna Louise being part of a strategy convo with Nick and Flick but again she’s not saying anything! And the editors cut another shot of her just standing there with Nick talking about how people are flying under the radar.
Kate fills Sue in on the plan to blindside Nick but Sue is rightly sceptical of Lee and Sam’s motives.

Immunity challenge time
And – phew – we get a “Come on in, guys” from JLap. I think it’s time the drops this mini interrogation before each challenge and just let them get on with it.
The challenge is one that didn’t stretch their budget but I don’t remember seeing it before. They have to spin a ball inside a wide wooden hoop – last person to drop the ball loses. Sue is out after only a minute. Kate is about the fifth to lose it and is devastated. The final four are El, Sam, Lee and Kristie and there’s a bit of chatter going on which seems designed to irritate Kristie, who’s struggling.


After an hour it’s Lee versus El and it must be hot as the other contestants are trying to take shelter in the skerrick of shade provided by their platforms. Five minutes later El wins in a top effort to outlast professional cricketer Lee.

Bad Girl alliance wants to split the vote so the girls vote for Kate and boys vote for Sue.
The Good Guy alliance needs Kylie’s vote but she’s worried about the backlash from the Bad Girls. So she spills the beans to Brooke and pitches it as a way to get rid of Nick’s idol – aargh! Kylie!
Meanwhile, Nick seems to have no idea he’s in trouble but we get a confessional of him saying he’s considering playing the idol to get a target off his back. That horse has bolted, my friend.
Brooke and Flick are ropable at Sam and now it’s all about how Sam is a snake. Bad Girl alliance (minus Nick) calls Sam to order and Magic Matt can’t believe how everything is crumbling just before tribal. “I’m over this shit,” says Flick.
I think Sam will flip again and go back to the majority. And if we get one of those tribals where JLap tells the players what their enemies’ strategy is, Nick could get antsy and play the idol.



Tribal council

There’s a lot of chat about playing with honour and then Kate goes all out with a call for action for people on the bottom of the alliance to realise where they are in the hierarchy. Nick says he considers Kate a friend (at which she rolls her eyes).


And then Sam sticks the knife in to Nick, calling him a snake. Not a smart move, Sam, when you don’t want to spook Nick into playing his idol. “Everyone has a little bit of blood on their hands,” Nick responds and I feel quite sorry for him – how dare he try and play the game, because people like Flick and Brooke aren’t playing the game and no-one else has ever voted anyone out … “I’m bored of all this chat .. I’m over this BS,” say Lee flatly.
Brooke and Flick are obviously worried Lee won’t be their puppet tonight – they could well vote for Nick after all. “It’s your game. Have the balls to vote for who you want to vote for,” Kate tells everyone. Does Kate do public speaking? She’s quite good.

The votes
We see Flick vote for Kate and Sam for Nick. JLap asks if anyone wants to play an idol and everyone looks at Nick – and he plays it! Yes – this makes things interesting. Sam looks panicked.
Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Kate, Sue, Kate, Sue, Kate, Kate, Kate and we don’t see the last vote.
Sue starts crying and whispers to her “I love you, Kate.” Aww – lovely.

Next time: We don’t see much, other than Nick being worried about his future in the game.
The votes: Voting for Nick were Kate, Sue, Kristie and Sam. We hear Lee say he had to vote for Kate because he gave his word.
“I hope the can of worms I’ve opened is creating chaos back at camp,” Kate tells the camera.



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68 Comments

    • I mean, it’s “Survivor”, so Flick’s strategy is sound. Still doesn’t make me like her.

      I kind of like how all Sam and Lee needed (to see what was actually going on in the camp hierarchy) was Kate to draw a pyramid chart.

      • Yes but I would have put “Kate’s a really strong player” as a reason to target her, ahead of likeable and inspiring.

      • But the pyramid just made them decide to oust Nick. No insight whatsoever into what Kate was really trying to point out, that they really should fear the evil twins plus El.

        • Maybe I was day dreaming but I’m sure after Flick and Brooke, Kate put Nick to one side on the top tier. I was thinking WTF? She had everything else right, but she didn’t place Kylie in the pyramid or JL or Matt (not that we saw).

          It was a bit of a worry that it was only after drawing this pyramid that it seemed to open the boy’s eyes to what was happening (not that it guaranteed any change).

          • Hi Calorie. I thought the same when Kate drew the pyramid, but it was quick so I wondered if I was mistaken.

        • Well, be fair, the conversation could’ve gone for half an hour (and in my head, it did, as Kate had to keep telling Sam and Lee, “No, this is you. This is your spot, right here. No, not up there, down here. Pay attention Sam”) and we only got the edited version.

  1. I gotta be honest. If Lee and Sam don’t follow through on this plan and gut out (like Sam did last night, voting for Conner even though he promised that he wouldn’t), which means Kate is gone, I’m gonna be so frickin’ annoyed that no amount of clingy black trunks will win me back.

    • I think the same with Kylie. Every five minutes, she approaches someone on the out and encourages them to rebel and flip the game … and then she goes right back to voting exactly how Brooke and Flick tell her to vote.

      But I do agree with you on Kristie.

      Personally, I don’t see anything saving Kate, but by gosh, I hope the good guy alliance comes through.

    • It was funny when Kristie thought she had outplayed Pgoebe, when in fact Phoebe shot herself in the foot by thinking she cd get away with her blatant puppet mastering.

  2. I actually quite like El – it’s just disappointing that she has teamed up with the mean girls. They really do remind me of 14 year olds.

  3. Sorry Juz, so far Jenna’s contribution to the episode has been one of the first people to mess up the immunity challenge, and that’s really it.

    • What did I tell you? Kylie is the wild-card here.

      It even makes sense to oust Nick, just to flush out the damn idol.

      These people.

  4. Why are these grown women like El and Kylie wanting to please two bitchy little girls? I really don’t understand it. Kylie telling Brooke is not going to win any loyalty from her.

    • Not to mention, why hasn’t Kylie figured out that she’s just cannon fodder? Obviously they’re going to throw her aside the second they have the chance, so why is she so blindly following them? Doing this, she has no chance of making the final.

      Maybe Kate needed to show *her* the pyramid diagram.

  5. Kate rolling her eyes when Nick monologued about how much he loved her and Sue was *fantastic*.

    I love you Kate. Even if you go home, I love you Kate.

    • Even if Kate doesn’t survive (and at this point, I don’t think she will), I *love* her so much for just finally telling pretty everybody playing exactly what she thinks of them all. This *is* the individual part of the game, but they’re all still doing exactly what the bad girl alliance is telling them to do.

      Play the damn game, you morons. Stop playing Flick and Brooke’s game.

      Thank you, Kate, for hanging a lampshade on the elephant in the room.

  6. Those stares from Fluck- sheesh

    For having such a great time picking blackheads and making my stomach flip, Brooke is permanently my me shitlist .

    Never to be taken off.

  7. I want Kate to be on the jury! She may have been voted off but she’s a bloody champion.
    If Nick has to stay I just hope they stop giving him air time because his voice just sets my nerves on edge.

  8. LEE YOU TRAITOROUS BASTARD.

    Fuckers. Kate didn’t deserve that. At least Nick flushed out the idol (and he didn’t get a huge number of votes, so it wouldn’t have mattered either way whether he’d played the idol or not, but at least it’s out of the way).

    I’m so annoyed at the mean girl alliance.

    And Kylie, my gosh. I’m so over her wishy-washy, “I’m everybody’s best friend!” bullshit. No Kylie, you’re gonna get stabbed in the back sooner rather than later, and it’s gonna be your own damn fault.

    And don’t get me started on Lee. At least Sam stuck to his word this time. And if Kylie and Lee hadn’t turned (and Nick hadn’t played the idol), then Kate would still be here.

    I’m annoyed.

  9. Lee just lost me too Windsong. At least the Idol is out now. They need to get rid of either Flick or Brooke. Nick might be useful yet.

    • Nick’s too much of a sycophant. I can imagine that he would go scurrying back to Brooke and/or Flick the second he got wind of a plot to get rid of her.

      It would make sense to try to carve up the mean girl alliance.

      As for Lee, I can’t help but wonder how far in the game his word is going to take him.

        • But exactly the point. Blind cave rats on Mars can see what’s going to happen, that the girls are gonna start picking off their own alliance members to get to the end. They’ve had two opportunities so far to do something about that … and they’ve screwed it up both times.

  10. Honour and integrity my ass….Lee is pussy whipped! As i have read on this forum he has supposedly hooked with El…would love to know when this all came about…honestly El has got to get away from those bitches…i would like to think she not in that category…
    Bloody Kylie is useless in the social game…she may be a good athelete but has
    no idea that she is being totally used and thinks she can just tag along…
    Sam and lee dont even appear to know how the game is played…where did they get these dills from??
    I’m backing Kristie or Sue…!!

    • I hate to say it, but Sue’s probably a goner tomorrow night. They’re picking off the ex-yellows one-by-one because nobody can really stop them, and Kristie seems a step closer to the ex-blues, so Sue is going home next episode. I don’t see that happening any other way, which I hate.

      • Yellow have had a rock around their neck the whole game. I haven’t enjoyed the imbalance ever since Snapu got to choose their own team.

        • No, I haven’t either.

          I’ve liked elements of this season, and I think some of the twists have worked quite well (and it feels like the producers have been experimenting with the tropes of the show, just to tweak it here and there). I like Lee’s advantage, that he can block somebody from voting at some point. I liked the twist of two tribes swapping members, I thought that was neat.

          But that twist just destroyed the yellow team completely. I mean, they didn’t win a single challenge after that, and there’s a reason why. They weren’t doing great anyway, and that’s a fair observation, but that twist just screwed them beyond the point of recovery.

          I mean, the fireworks will happen once they oust Sue and Kristie and start turning on each other, but that was always going to happen, and ever since that episode, we’ve just been treading water and going through the easily-predictable motions until the game actually picks back up. I haven’t been a fan of that at all.

          • It signed the death warrants of Conner & Kate because they cdnt win anything, then they were shot off like clay pigeons.

      • Sue may have a lifeline if the evil twins go for revenge on Sam. They see her as low-hanging fruit and think they can get her anyday.

  11. Sam is smarter than Lee. Too bad about tonight’s elimination.
    Can’t wait until this one and her stuck up disekick, “Brookie” go.

    • Lee’s falling into that classic ‘Survivor’ trap of not knowing when *not* to be a good guy. He admitted on camera that he didn’t want to give in to his emotions, and he wanted to stay loyal to his initial alliance … but being handicapped by loyalty to people who will show him naught in return? I mean, he’s still trapped by an emotion, really, isn’t he?

      He’s gonna have to do a lot to win me back, because he really lost me tonight. As for Kylie and her odd sleeping arrangements, kick her out of the tent and let her sleep in the rain. Damn it, Kyles. Very mad at you.

      • Like Mr Pickles in Box trolls disvovered, you can’t be a good guy when your alliance are all bad guys.
        Mr Pickles is on the right.

  12. The black widows can ditch Kylie and Lee now for all I care. Kylie backed the wrong horses. She must really lack social intelligence not to realize she was the Sue Heck of the alliance; the girl on the outer, whose name they fon’t know. The other girls wouldn’t even wipe their feet on her.

  13. I couldn’t care less about the “good guys” alliance. I guess this makes a great narrative for TV but as Nick rightfully said: they all have blood on their hands!

    You can have all the honor and integrity in the world outside of the game, but the point of Survivor is not to have the most honor; it is to make the best strategic moves possible!!!

    Woo’s honour, respect, discipline and integrity cost him $1 million when he picked Tony over Kass for final 2.

    • Yeah I wonder if many of them have actually watched the show before. You’re not there to make friends, you’re there to play a game & win the money.

    • But isn’t the point to make people think that you are a good guy, honourable etc, while still pulling the strings in the background? With the best players, like Cydney last US season, nobody realises until nearly the end, that the ‘nice’ player has actually been the one who has made others think that they are making the decisions.

      So, is it possible that Lee is the actual mastermind? Planting ideas with the evil twins that they think are their own, and then stepping back behind his honourable shield and watching the outcome? If he is, he would be the sneakiest player I’ve seen.

      • Fijane, interesting point, but I don’t get that impression of Lee being a mastermind of survivor gameplay… Happy to be proven wrong though…

    • Absolutely. Kate and Connor were both part of the Vavau 5. Their only interest was voting off the ex-Agenoas without even considering the pretence of negotiating with them. They acted in exactly the same manner towards the ex-Agenoas that they are now complaining about from the core alliance.

      Kate made a great speech about the evils of alliances that won’t negotiate. It would have been so much more moving when she was part of an alliance that refused to negotiate.

      As for Kiley, she may well overtake Rohan’s early lead for Oblivious Player of the Season.

  14. Thanks for the great recap Juz.
    Well that was anti-climactic. Damn Nick for playing his idol.
    Kylie Kylie Kylie why did you have to open your big mouth? Silly girl.
    I really wanted the underdogs to turn the tables on the ones on top.

  15. After last night, there are a lot more ‘dislikes’ than likes in the people who are left. Kylie turns out to be more of a dobber than Conner (who was really just an innocent), and Lee is being led around by body parts other than his brain.

    How shallow are those girls, especially Brooke? They are just vanity on legs. That’s why we all loved Kate, she was a beautiful personality, and clearly a quality woman.

      • Last night was the point-of-no-return for quite a few of them. Kylie would do horribly in front of a jury, anyway, so I can’t imagine how her plan to get eliminated 6th or 5th is going to help her anyway.

      • Daisy, I am a bit baffled as to Kylie’s behaviour. I thought she would have jumped at the chance to be in a real alliance offered to her by newcomers who want to break up the tired old rotting core. I thought she was only being nice to those people, biding her time until the merge came, given her kindness towards outsiders that joined Sanaapu after her, but alas. As others have pointed out sticking with the evil twins is only going to get her a top 6 at best, and more likely a top 8 or 9. Had Sanaapu not become the winning machine they were, there was a time way back where she was first and last on the chopping block (they even preferred keeping a starving unwell man who did not want to be there over her).

    • Yes Fijane, agreed. After last night I couldn’t really give a shit who goes now. Kate and Conner were my favourites. Out of who is left most likeable to me now are Sue, Sam, and even Nick or Matt.

      I’m completely new to this so pardon my ignorance, but I think everyone voted out so far should be on upcoming tribal council that gets a vote. How much weight that vote carries and when they get to start using it I have no idea.

      I wish people like Phoebe and Craig were still around. I would have liked to see how they would operate under the merge, hopefully rattling the core alliance.

      I know 500k is a lot of money, and it influences people’s decisions in the way they play in not wanting to upset the ‘top dogs’. I also know how impossible it would be to trust anyone in this game, especially last minute flipping attempt suggestions by outsiders, but it’s so frustrating as a viewer when you see how close the underdogs came to outsing someone, had they just stuck together, and if they were playing the way they really wanted, with balls, they could easily outnumber the evil twins.

      This is my first season of Survivor, so again I might not understand fully, but it appears that Jonathon reads the votes randomly, and unless it’s 12 votes to 1 or 11 to 2 it’s impossible (especially with the split vote) to know who voted for whom, so why are they so damn scared that Brooke will find out? In my mind it would help their cause as it would throw doubt into the core alliance’s mind and make them question everyone, hence shaking up their set elimination order.

      • They aren’t playing like the more Survivor savvy Americans do.
        I like Sue too. I like the way she just walks around with a no bull sh*t scowl on her face…but is tough and doesn’t sook. She looks like a bitch, but isn’t. I like that. Kind of like Heidi’s grandfather.

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