Australian Survivor – Mon, Sept 5

So, I reckon the ads about Kate and a possible medevac will prove to be a total beat-up. Who’s with me?
Over at his new tribe Nick is trying to do an Ozzy, fishing and crabbing to keep the tribe well fed.
But Brooke is not fooled and thinks he’s a snake. The pretty girl alliance is working on Teigan and seems to have won her over. Urgh. I just wish Teigan would team up with Nick, Matt and Kylie.
Over at yellow Andrew is keen to put newbies Spidey Sam and Conner to use for whatever it is he’s planning – presumably booting out Craig.
Sam must be missing the gym, because he’s doing chin-ups on a tree branch. Save your energy, Sam! They must be feeding them too well. Coma Kate is feeling on the bottom of her tribe (which is true) and decides to reach out to Sam and Conner, also, even though she’s one of these “I don’t like alliances” people. Kate is a naturally fit for them but she’s not strategic enough and Andrew is playing the game hard – as he should.
Nick’s brain is still working overtime and he raises the idea of a split vote with Matt, trying to either vote out Kylie or at the very least flush out the idol and target Teigan.
Magic Matt likes the idea but, as Brooke tells him, Nick is “a sneaky bugger”. They like the idea but want to target Nick instead of Teigan.
Over at yellow, everyone is checking out Kate’s armpit and her gross lump. It would be hard for her, not having a mirror in which to look.

It’s challenge time …
And everyone goes nuts when they realise the winner gets a Hungry Jack’s feast.
For the runner-up, each tribe member gets a Whopper junior.
For yellow, Andrew is sitting out AGAIN. What’s that about?
The challenge involves balancing on a barrel and slowly pulling on a rope to travel about 20 metres. Firey Kylie, as expected, is a gun at the walking on the barrel bit. I bet she days triathlon and Tough Mudder all the time.
After a spate of successes, red is once again sucking at challenges and this time Lee and Kate are looking on helplessly as their teammates dither. Again, they’ve put Lee last as the final element of the challenge involves chucking stuff.
Blue team wins the challenge and Kate and Sue are desperately trying to not let red erode their lead. “And Sue throws it backwards!” yells JLap. Uh oh.
Kat actually lands one of the beanbags – good for her, proving she can do well in a physical challenge! Luckily for yellow, Kate knows how to throw forwards, and she nabs second place for her team.
(Side note: During this, Mr Juz is faffing around on his iPad. “You’re not watching?” I ask. “Nah, I’ll watch them when they eat their hamburgers. That’s the only bit I want to see.” He’s a simple man …”
It looks like there are no vegetarians in this season, as everyone rips into their burgers. Poor reds are stuck with beans and rice and Lee is particularly down about their string of losses. The former professional cricketer is just not used to being around people who suck at some things. And he’s missing his kids. But it’s ok, he soon recovers and is eating rice clad only in his undies, so again all is right with the world.

Immunity challenge

This is a challenge I don’t recall seeing before on Survivor. One member from each tribe is hoisted up above the water. They are anchored by one person at a time holding a rope while standing in the shallows.
Wisely, the teams send up the light girls to be hoisted. Blue team goes through anchors fairly quickly, although Nick does last 25 minutes. They don’t have any bulky, tall guys and must not be allowed to wrap the rope around themselves for support. For yellow, Craig is a total gun, lasting 52 minutes before handing over to Sam.


(Anyone else think Craig probably usually has less body fat but ate more calories than usual in preparation for the Survivor diet?)
Blue loses while the other teams are still on their second (muscular) person.
Just as everyone heads off JLap yells out to Kate he noticed something under her arm. Oh, right, it was totally JLap who spotted it. The medic takes a look at the potential Vesuvius and tells JLap it looks infected. JLap pushes hard for a “yes” to the “could Kate be pulled from the game?”. I’m a bit disappointed we don’t know the name of this doctor, as in their appearances in US Survivor they get much more camera time and become characters in their own right.
And here we go: Kate is lying down and the doc is hovering near the pustule with a large syringe. Aagh! This is worse than that worm crawling out of Jen’s ear last season. Look away!
JLap just looms over her … hold her hand, JLap! He’s wearing latex gloves but his bedside manner leaves something to be desired. Even if she’s used to being prodded from her coma days, no-one wants to be operated on lying on a beach.
For the viewer’s benefit, he says: “You’re going to put a wick inside to help the pus drain out.” Ewww! The doc says she’s fine to continue in the game as long as she heals well.

At the blue beach, Nick is trying to work out how to save his skin and tries to put his vote Kylie or Teigan plan into action. Teigan isn’t feeling the love as much as Nick is, but says she won’t write his name down.
The pretty girl alliance tells Firey Kylie (with the idol) they need to vote out sneaky Nick – they lay it on pretty thick how much they love Kylie. I wish Kylie would just go try to form an alliance with someone – anyone.
Flick tells Magic Matt that Nick needs to go but Matt wants to keep him around to help in challenges even though “I don’t trust him from a bar of soap [sic]”. “Right now, we kind of need the snake,” he says. (And not that he mentions it, but Teigan has a dodgy tatt of some Asian scribble on her neck that looks dreadful.)


At tribal council
Teigan says it’s all puppies and roses at her new tribe, while Nick goes in hard on how good he is at puzzles, and reminds everyone he did well in the physical challenge today (and he gets JLap’s approval for standing against the bigger units of the cast).
Kylie isn’t wearing her idol this time but will she actually play it? Nick pitches that he’s also good to keep around as his nemesis, the yellow tribe, will be gunning for him in the future and he’s a “meat shield”.
Kylie decides to play the idol, because she doesn’t want to go home having sucked at a challenge (hey, Kylie, you weigh less than half of those guys and are about half as tall).
I’m thinking Teigan is going home, as she got a fair bit of camera time tonight. The votes are split between Kylie, Nick and Teigan, so it’s time for a revote, removing Kylie from the mix.
On the revote, JLap only reads votes for Teigan (and we see at the end that every tribe member did indeed vote for her). Nick is going to need to change his undies, but he probably only has one pair. I’m glad he’s still in it as Teigan didn’t seem too fussed about playing the game.
[And we see later that for the first round of voting, pretty girl alliance voted Nick, Teigan and Nick voted Kylie, Kylie and Magic Matt voted Teigan.]

Next time
The tribes are merging from three into two. Yay! We should see some scrambling … and get an update on Kate’s armpit.



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36 Comments

  1. The red team has a habit of starting poorly and hoping that Lee can make up the difference at the end, because he’s such a freaking badass. Sometimes it’s worked, but more often than not IIRC, it hasn’t.

    Then again, my boys on the yellow tribe start well but fade (usually making it a race for second). I just want Conner and Sam to stick around. It’s the problem with picking favourites on this show, your favourite never lasts.

  2. I haven’t been Craig’s biggest fan, but he was really badass in the immunity challenge today, outlasting the two other teams by a long time (and lightly flirting with JLap while he was doing it, too).

    Now, the next question is … do the blue team ditch Nick (like half of them want to) or do they finally do something about Flick and Brooke?

    • Craig was a champ. It helps that he’s tall and muscular, but he cruised it in compare to Rohan. Andrew is right to view Craig as a threat.

  3. Phoebe shits me – she’s always in the middle of every loss with her negative contribution. but will probably stick around because of a chicks’ alliance

    After tonight Nick too joins my shitlist for comparing a Hungry Jacks burger to losing his virginity and making me go there mentally.

    • I’d compare eating a Hungry Jacks burger to losing my sanity.

      Elvis died eating a hamburger. He didn’t “survive”

        • Didn’t someone die in a Hungry Jacks toilet cubicle recently? I’d be nervous about using the conveniences. No immunity idol can save one from that.

    • Phoebe and Flick, Bolders. And Flick’s sidekick. How was Flick’s reason to flick Nick. “He’s sneaky”. I don’t know why they didn’t blindsight Flick and give her the Flick.
      I am glad Kylie gets another lease on life.

    • Hah! 🙂

      The audience never hears everything that goes on, for the sake of drama. I wonder if that was Nick’s plan all along, because it sounded vaguely like the idea he was presenting to Brooke earlier. Split the vote, get Kylie to flush out the idol, then (hopefully) everyone keeps him and votes out Tegan in round two. I mean, it worked out pretty well for everybody, all things considered.

      Well, except for Tegan.

      I do agree, though, that the blue team needs to do far better at voting. Flick and Brooke are gonna cause problems down the line, but everyone keeps forgetting about them (even Matt, and he’s smarter than that).

      • Blue are very bad at voting. Any group of people that lets itself be dominated by something as silly as the pretty girl alliance is stupid by definition.

        • What I don’t get is that, after the tribe swap, Matt specifically said to Nick that the Brooke/Flick alliance is a little too powerful for everybody’s liking … and then they all seemingly forgot.

          It’s probably gonna be all for naught come tonight, when they shuffle all the tribes around (and in the promo, Craig was laughing maniacally, so I’m assuming Nick greets his yellow tribe-mates again). But still. They really should’ve done something about Flick by now.

          • The problem is that Mentalist Matt has a completely weird approach to tribal council. Weird as in batsh*t crazy. At the joint TC Connor proved that Flick was after both of them. Naturally Matt responded by deciding Connor was wrong to expose dirty laundry and then voted to support Flick.

  4. “He’s wearing latex gloves but his bedside manner leaves something to be desired.”

    And for that matter, did JLap have to provide running commentary for the doctor working on Kate’s boil, just like one of the immunity challenges? It was an odd moment.

    • People on Facebook are complaining we didn’t see the pus lol. Perhaps it Tenplay could have it as a deleted scene. It would get a lot of views.

  5. Again….if they were the US Survivors, they would get rid of Kate. She’s too nice AND she’s a little heroine with a brilliant back story. These guys haven’t been thinking about final three, or we haven’t seen it.

  6. Man, the Blues could have easily split Flick and Brooke…what are they thinking…or not thinking…
    As much as Nick a snake, well done in that first leg of the challenge…that looked extremely hard..Craig smashed it and put a huge target on his back to boot!
    Wonder if Andrew carrying some sort of i jury too?
    Neale from last season would have probably preferred our lovely doctor to the US one, that wick may have helped him and Aubry heaps!
    Two tribe merge…Sam seems very pissed off with Connor but doesnt appear to be saying it…wonder if he will go back to the Blues??

  7. thx for the recap, actually JLP did mention the dr’s name (Dr Briony?). The immunity challenge I think has never been done in the US version, I liked it. Variation from a race+puzzle is always good. Can’t wait for the two new tribes!!

    • Thanks, q10. Hopefully if we see her again she’ll get a “Dr Briony” up on screen. I bet US Survivor pinches that hanging challenge – it was good.

  8. I’m new to survivor but surely if you’re playing a strategic game wouldn’t you be better off if people weren’t on to you? Nick is so transparent and to my mind it was only the lack of males on the team that saved him – bet they regretted that when the merge was announced. Didn’t someone predict on the previous thread that the merge wouldn’t be coming for weeks?

    • I think the problem is the show is using the term merge when, traditionally, that refers to two teams merging into one for the final stretch. This is more of a shuffle or swap.

  9. Thanks for the great recap Juz.
    So Kentucky is the sponsor for I’m a Celebrity & Hungry Jacks is the sponsor for Survivor.
    I look forward to the rewards where they get to go away to somewhere exotic with some exotic feast.
    Wow, that challenge where they had to lift the girls was massive. That certainly showed some muscle power.
    I wasn’t sure if Kylie was going to use her idol for a minute there but luckily she did or she would have been gone.
    Finally a tribe shuffle. I thought they must be due to change to 2 tribes.

    • If Kylie hadn’t played the idol, it would’ve been a three-way tie, and it would’ve only been Brooke, Flick and Matt voting … so I’d imagine they would stick to the plan (they went with anyway) to ditch Tegan, although you make a good point. If Kylie was still votable (because the tie meant they could only vote for Nick or Tegan), they may very well have gone after her (which would’ve been a mistake, but as mentioned upthread, the blue team just sucks at voting).

        • It’s interesting that everyone talks about Flick being dangerous. Brooke is doing well to keep her strategising more under wraps to make Flck the bigger target.

          • Yes, juz. That’s why I said puppet master girls. Flick is more obviously pulling strings but the other one is letting her.

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