Australian Survivor – Tues, Sept 13

I still can’t get used to having three episodes of Survivor each week. When the US Version returns later this month with Gen X versus Millennials (yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t use Gen Y either) a mere 40 minutes of Survivor a week will pass in the blink of an eye. I am looking forward to seeing how the show covers the contestants being evacuated on day 2 due to a cyclone in Fiji – hopefully we get to see a little behind-the-scenes stuff.

After the Kat vote out we learn that Conner tipped off the core yellow alliance that Andrew was being targeted. And that Craig told Kristie the alliance was targeting Kat. Andrew is none too pleased and vows to have his revenge.
At yellow, Coma Kate wakes everyone by banging on a pan with a stick, just so the producers can get some comedic footage of Andrew attempting to do yoga. Kate says the yoga will prepare them to win the next challenge by lighting a fire in their bellies. Andrew bags it out off camera but has a bit of a go.
Over at blue everyone is sick of eating beans so the talk turns to whether they should eat the chickens, which apparently are not laying eggs.
Nick is pragmatic and says straight up they should eat the chook to give them energy. Most of the others agree, including Flick.
But Magic Matt, who used to work in a poultry shop, wants to let them roam free and says he wouldn’t eat the chicken anyway.
Cue a Nick confessional (we’ve missed you, Nick!) about Matt putting on a nice guy facade because he once had 62kg of chicken nuggets in his freezer.
Then Sam says they could all get food poisoning because they don’t know how to prepare a chook, Lee jumps on board with his new best bro and the backflips spread from there.
It seems no-one wants to be known as the Survivor chook killer. Last US season Mark the Chicken was a key character, but Chester and her friend haven’t been that fun to watch. Kill ’em, I say. Nick notes how much influence Matt has with the tribe.


[EDIT: Australian Survivor has since tweeted the blue still has Chester the Chicken – they let go two other chooks.)

It’s challenge time
Her former tribemates are delighted to see Kat was voted out. Brooke and El rock up carrying the chooks and they try to wheedle JLap into swapping the chooks for other food. He tells them to suck it up and learn how to fish.


We see the challenge is a Survivor classic, Hot Pursuit, where contestants weighed down with sandbags must chase each other through thigh-deep water (this is the one where eventual winner, firefighter Tom Westman, proved a challenge beast in Palau – more here). As people drop out, they pass their sandbags to stronger team members. Lee and Sam should do well here and, yes, blue team starts out at a fair trot. Matt drops out and passes his 6kg bag to Firey Kylie, while Sue is first to go on yellow, handing over to Kate. This must be strategy to not give the bags to the big guys. Andrew flakes out then offers the helpful advice from the sidelines to “pace yourself”. Kylie suggests to blue that she and Nick should detach so that Lee and Sam can sprint to a win. Seems smart. Sam is carrying 24kg by himself. Kristie falls over and Spidey Sam sprints to tag yellow, almost strangling Lee in the process. He finally manages to tag Conner and blue wins a chocolate feast reward.
Coma Kate, who did a great job in the challenge, is sick of losing. “We can’t keep on using the same formula to lose,” she tells the camera. Ooh, please tell me Kat is going to start talking to Phoebe.

Blue team gets to dig into brownies, doughnuts and chocolate milk and, boy, they are going to have such huge sugar crashes a few hours later, not to mention they’ll be rushing into the bushes.
Magic Matt skols a one-litre bottle of chocolate milk to impress the crowd. After the feast the chicken release takes place and poor Nick and Flick are sad to see so much food walking away.
Loser yellow is sad to miss out on chocolate. Kate goes sea cucumber hunting with Phoebe and Kristie but it’s just an excuse to talk strategy.
“I don’t know about you guys but he missed me off at tribal,” Kate tells them, referring to Andrew. This is Kate, who at the start of the season looked like she was too nice to form alliances and would just play a physical game. Yay!
“I’m sick of dragging dead meat along for the ride,” Kate tells the camera.

It’s immunity challenge time
It’s another holding things up challenge. Contestants must hold up a net into which their rivals toss coconuts to make it heavier.
Sue and Craig hold the ropes for yellow while Sam and Flick do it for blue. For yellow the girls prove to be the best coconut chuckers. Blue targets the net of Craig, who performed so well at the challenge where they had to hoist up a tribe member. There is not a single coconut in Sue’s net. After a massive effort Craig’s rope slips through his fingers. What a champion.
Yellow is targeting Sam but now there are quite a few coconuts in Sue’s net and JLap gives her props for doing so well. Craig is cheering her on from the sidelines and she outlasts Sam. We see Andrew struggling just to walk back to pick up a coconut, to add to the “Andrew doesn’t try” edit. Despite her valiant effort Sue can’t outlast Flick, who is only just now getting weight in her net. Blue wins immunity so yellow is back at tribal yet again.

Back at camp, Sue wants to stay loyal to the alliance and, since Andrew wants Kristie gone, they are voting Kristie. Kate tells Andrew she’s going with the flow and we learn that Andrew in fact hates Kate. Kristie and Phoebe sound out Craig about ditching the dead wood that is Andrew and, while he knows where they’re coming from, he’s non-committal.
Eventually Kate broaches the subject of Andy’s loserishness with Craig. They are struggling with their desire to win versus loyalty guaranteeing safety. Andrew knows he’s in trouble and all of a sudden is best buds with Conner, talking about how Kate may flip.
In the shelter Andrew whispers to Kristie that they should do a deal to save each other and he’ll guarantee she and Phoebe safety.
And [this is where my four-year-old wakes up crying because of the heavy rain here in SA and I miss the next five minutes of scheming – aargh! I shall have to catch it on TenPlay]. I can’t see Kristie trusting Andrew, though. It would be a shame if Kate is voted out as she’s a physical force, but she is a huge threat to win the final prize.


At tribal council
JLap starts with much praise for Craig and Sue’s rope-holding prowess before they get into the “who’s in the majority?” speculation. Kate says she’ll be voting with her head, heart and guts. There’s a lot of drawn-out questioning about alliances but no exciting answers.
We only see Andrew write down a K and they are trying to make us think he’s voting for Kate, but surely it’s Kristie.
The votes are Andrew, Kristie, Andy, Kristy, Andrew (so he knows someone flipped), Kristie and Andrew. So I’m guessing Craig joined the girls to vote out Andrew.
Andrew is cheerful enough as his torch is snuffed but as he walks off, mutters: “I didn’t see that coming. Jesus.”

Next time
Craig is still looking for the idol that Phoebe found a few days ago. They really don’t like to give much away with their previews.

The vote reveal
Yes, we see Craig did indeed vote with Kate, Phoebe and Kristie. Andrew tells the camera he has no regrets and recognises he was too cocky.
“What better way to go out of Survivor then to be blindsided,” he says.

Thoughts
Well, I’m glad Kate finally decided to play the game. Craig should be able to talk Sue round and smooth over any talk of broken loyalty as they seem tight. It will be interesting to see where Conner falls in all of this, and what Phoebe does with her idol.



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33 Comments

  1. Andrew is really annoying.
    Nick is really annoying.
    I’m feeling annoyed watching them.
    I say show more Lee without a shirt on .

    • Honestly, I would’ve been conflicted about killing the chickens too (although I eat chicken all the time, so I do understand what Matt was saying), but Nick did make a good point. If Matt is so persuasive that he can talk an entire tribe of people into doing something (that is probably gonna hurt them)? That is something to keep an eye on. Matt is smart, I just wish he was a little more genre-savvy.

      You’re right about Andrew, though. His smugness was amusing when he wasn’t the focus of his tribe, but now that he’s getting more air-time? Yeah, he’s on my nerves too.

      • I think Matt is smart too but is he really that persuasive? I think it would be pretty easy to talk a group of people who aren’t meat workers out of killing chickens – it sounded to me like they were looking for excuses not to kill them.

      • I think Matt is barely ahead of Andrew on the stupidity scale, although he is very persuasive and Andrew was not. Matt, if you will recall, responded to discovering that Flick was trying to vote him out by punishing Connor and voting against him.

        As far as the chickens go, they were almost certainly dead to snakes, feral cats, or other predators, within a couple of days, if not hours, of their ‘release’. Inviting domesticated animals to share the Survivor experience by making them castaways in the jungle makes sense only if you get your natural history from watching reruns of Bambi.

        The chicken decision ranks in stupidity with Colton’s tribe agreeing to surrender immunity because he wanted to vote someone off out of pure spite.

    • Yeah, I’m thinking at the moment that all the talk about possibly voting out Andrew and, “I’m suck of carrying dead weight” is all just a ruse by the production team … and the blue team are going go to tribal council tonight (where residual angst about the chicken-gate will cause some tension).

    • Once again impressed by Craig. His face was turning red, right at the end. He’s wasted on a shitty tribe, because he is a power-house.

      Meanwhile, I’m actually shouting at the TV, “JUST GET RID OF ANDREW!” He’s worse than useless.

  2. What a wimp Andrew is. If he put as much energy into challenges as he does in talking about how good he is at the game, Yellow would be winning occasionally.

    • Yes, he certainly talks himself up. I don’t find him entertaining to watch.
      I’ll be really shocked if Kristie flips and votes for Kate – she’d be stupid to do so.

      • Not only is he useless, but Andrew’s a snake in the grass. Best to get rid of him *now* then have to worry about him in the future.

  3. Well that was satisfying.

    I hope they had some kind of big, burly security guards lurking just off-camera, because I doubt Andrew left without a fight. Conner and Sue still voted (with Andrew) against Kristie, which made Craig the swing vote (which was the right thing to do, both in a strength-sense, and in a strategic-sense). It was smart that Kristie didn’t trust him.

    I wonder if Andrew was anywhere along the Asperger spectrum, because there just seemed to be something a little off about him, you know? Like, he just didn’t quite get that other people were playing the game too. He was just kind of disconnected in a weird way with everything going on around him.

    • He struck me as more arrogant than Asperger’s. I think he just wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
      Yes it was satisfying.
      I think once Vavau had to start playing all players in every challenge it became obvious that Andrew was a liability and just to make it really obvious he failed in a challenge where Sue stood out.

    • He was just trying to play a villian character which wasn’t natural to him is the vibe i was getting. And using the “you voted for me so i must vote for you” (and seemed very Russell Hantz with the hat etc) strategy, which isn’t necessarily always in your best interests.

      • Yep. He knew they wouldn’t cast him on the show normally as he doesn’t fit the nerd or hot girl or old person or superfit stereotypes, so went the villain rout..

  4. I like going for underdogs, so am patiently hoping/waiting for a Sanaapu loss just to see the voting dynamics. That’s one of the advantages of 3 episodes a week

  5. Many of Andrew the Great and Powerful’s confessionals are actually direct quotes from Russell. They drove me up the wall when Russell said them and Russell was a far better player than Andrew.

  6. I couldn’t see Craig and Kate not jumping at the chance to remove Andrew. It was very clear in the five, that A expected everyone to just follow his lead at every vote. Nobody wants to be someone else’s lapdog.

    Why didn’t anyone mention that those two chickens would have been some predator’s lunch ten minutes are heading into the jungle? Or did ‘releasing’ really mean that the producers took them back?

  7. These Aussie Survivors are a bit lame. I know that there are vegetarians but when you are marooned on an island and starving you don’t go all Rainbow Warrior. You eat the last man standing if you have to.

    • The reason I support the chickens in this scenario is that the humans chose to be marooned and starving on an island for $elfish reasons …..and the chickens didn’t.

      You’d think I’d be desensitized after years of seeing animals hacked and butchered on Ma$terchef by deluded amatas. But was pleased to see the chickens prevail in the hastily convened plebiscite.

      Like Fijane above , I was waiting for someone to say the chickens would be prey in the wild. You don’t have to be a ‘ken brain surgeon to see that.

      • Are there many natural land-based predators in the Samoan islands? I suppose there’d maybe be feral dogs or cats, or maybe snakes or something? I genuinely don’t know.

        • I was thinking along the lines of wild pig being attracted to a chicken carcass but I don’t know either. I remember that the family of Samoans on The Biggest Loser could demolish roast pig very easily. The Auvales would have eaten the chickens days ago.

          I was recalling an old 60 Minutes yarn about the guy stuck in the snow /mountains for a fortnight. Only had a chocolate bar. At first the guy was naturally scared because he could hear a bear prowling around outside the cave he was in. After a few days freezing and starving he started of thinking of ways to kill it and eat it.

          People on Mountain Men were eating beaver ( there’s no other way to put it, sorry) on the show I saw last night…..and they were worried about Grizzly Bears smelling the meat from miles away. The bears eat their dogs. Ain’t nature something?

          Samoa seems like a holiday compared to parts of Alaska, Carolina etc. Check out Mountain Men and you’ll see.

      • Yes. I knew you would be on the chicken’s side Dave. And in real life I would be too. But then I also would not be on that island without a 4 or 5 star resort.

  8. Hey chicken sounds better than rat or flying fox…..

    “The only indigenous mammals in Samoa are the rat (Mus exulans Peale) and the flying fox (Pteropus samoensis Peale). Numerous species of birds and mammals, chiefly domesticated, have been introduced by the Samoans and Europeans. Two species of snakes, several different lizards, and the gecko are found. Insect life includes many species of moths, beetles, spiders, and ants”.

    Crispy skinned rat, anyone?

  9. Thanks for the great recap Juz.
    Yay, we got rid of 2 arseholes this week First Daniel from Zumbo’s finally left & now we finally got rid of Andrew. Who’s in control of the game now Andrew?
    Sue was unbelievable holding that rope for so long. Great effort.
    Andrew was bloody hopeless throwing those coconuts.
    I bet there were a lot of upset tummies after eating all that chocolate.
    How stupid to just let those chickens go. I hope they find their way to the Vavau tribe. I bet they’d bloody eat them.

    • Yeah I just found that out. Not happy. And it’s on at 10.00 way too late for me. Guess that means we won’t get a live finale either; Fuck you ch 9.

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