40 Comments

  1. I’m getting scared that we’re gonna lose Robbie tonight. Someone hold me, I’m not ready for this.

    Go after Benji, damn it. He’s far more annoying.

      • Wow. I wish someone would look st me the way Lydia looks at Robbie.
        It was sooo obvious she was never going to write his name. Heath and Fenella has a shot if they had tried Benji- I reckon the girls might have gone for him.

        • I think Sharn has decided she needs a Contender all her very own just like Lydia has. The Group of 4 could be a fairly powerful alliance.

      • No, I mean, I wasn’t complaining, but they are quite liberal in showing off the boys and their assets, this season, aren’t they? That wasn’t even the second time. Eye candy aside, the censorship issues are just really … strange. Was it last season where even the hint of somebody’s butt crack got blurred?

        All these contestants sign contracts before they go on the show, right? So I was actually thinking, what if it’s not about the audience but the castaways? There’s probably a line in their contracts about whether they give 10 permission to show any nudity. I imagine a few would tick the ‘no’ box and a few might think ‘who cares’ and tick yes.

        But it wouldn’t surprise me if the television standards commission is getting a few angry phone calls tomorrow morning.

        • The US version is a lot more prudish than ours. They beep the swearing & even blur their mouths. They blur any nudity, even if it’s just their pants slipping down a bit.

      • The thing about Benji is that he thinks he’s this grand mastermind … and he’s not. We’ve figured him out, and I’d be surprised if the castaways hadn’t figured it out either.

        I’d be inclined to believe Fenella’s logic re: Robbie (or Prince Robbie the Handsome, as I’ve been calling him lately). The merge must be on everybody’s minds, so the biggest physical threats now all have giant targets on their backs. And ever since Lydia tranferred across, Robbie’s just gone to this whole other zen level of focus and strength.

        Alternatively, they either (a) just don’t see Benji as a threat, which is understandable, or (b) they’ve figured out that he has an idol (which someone might’ve, off-camera, during the night when Benji went looking).

        Benji is not someone I see making it to the end. Honestly, I see Robbie lasting longer than Benji. Benji’s too loud in his gameplay, and he’s just too damn slimy.

        • I can’t imagaine that if the tribe knew about the idol and discussed Benji over Robbie, that the producers wouldn’t have put that footage right in front of us. That’s the sort of scramble they consider good TV. I can only conclude that Benji was never seriously considered. Pity.

          • I agree. I fear they don’t rate Benji and because Robbie is a powerhouse in challenges, he is seen as bigger threat. DAMN.
            I know Windsong lurrves Robbie, but he is – how to put this delicately – The Pretty One rather than the Smart One. You can practically feel the cogs grinding when he thinks.

            I don’t think that Benji is the criminal mastermind/ and not being subtle to make the tribe think Robbie is top dog. I think it’s simply that he HAS been a gun at challenges – since Lydia showed up to zen him to success – and that’s all that they are basing their choices on.

          • No, I’ve always said that Robbie, for all his strengths, lacks that streak of ruthlessness that makes for great Survivor gameplay. I think he’s great at being friends with the other castaways (and I genuinely believe, from what we’ve seen onscreen, that he’s a decent and pleasant enough person to be around), but I don’t think he’s prepared to really manipulate those relationships to get further in the game. I’d love to see him make it to the end (if not outrightly win the damn thing), but I just don’t see him making it (not unless someone carries him there as a goat, but I think that’d be pretty risky).

            As for Benji, he’s slimy and thinks he’s clever, but he’s just not clever enough. There’s no subtlety to Benji’s machinations, and he’s too easily caught in his own lies. It’s why I think they’ve dismissed him as a threat. Because he doesn’t really pose much of one, they’ve pretty much got his number. His secret immunity idol is the cog in the works, though.

  2. Phew. Close call.

    So the Champions girls followed Benji and Robbie and ousted Heath? I figured there was no way that Benji was going to play his idol for Robbie. I wonder if the girls genuinely thought Heath was the bigger threat, or if they stuck to their mini-alliance with Robbie/Benji … or Lydia (who seems to be fond of Robbie) talked them into keeping him around?

    Either way, as long as he makes the merge, I’m okay with it.

    Gee that tribal council looked like a dour affair. The thunder storm sprang up just when they went to vote, and everybody (even Jonathon) wound up soaked to the bone. I loved that even the castaways expect pithy catch-phrases from Jonathon at the end of every tribal.

    What I am interested in is seeing the Champions dynamics change after the merge. Will Sam stick with the alpha boys, will Shane drift between alliances, will Bryan shack up with the contenders boys? Will Lydia keep her word to Robbie and Benji?

  3. Hearh definitely wasnt a threat, those girls really should have targetted Robbie but it totally seems like lydia and robbie are tight…
    The contenders also should have stuck together to oust lydia…man, she is dangerous…good dangerous…so i hope we see her upset the champions a bit…
    Sharn has been my fave from day 1 and was curious to see how she voted, true to form she stuck with the girls and made a very convincing lie to heath…i hope she stays in for a while.
    Shonee is hilarious over at the other tribe, she will probably coast on for a while cooking coconut apertisers and i hope Fenella coasts with her for a bit
    Am looking forward to the original Champions duelling it out for top dog in the merge…

    • I like how it’s taken 30 days for Shonee to realise, “… hey, I need to be useful around camp”.

      I see the Mat/Steve alliance staying strong, post-merge, but I also can easily imagine everybody else turning on them.

    • Agree with your reasoning, Sioux. I am really sad to see Heath go, and was convinced that they had Robbie sewn up. It would have been a pity to see Robbie go, with slimy Benji sitting beside him, but anything to save Heath. It seems that Lydia probably saved R, and I think you are right that this tribe lost their opportunity to remove her (not that I wanted that). But she has played very well in making a good alliance yet pulling Robbie as well.

      Sharn made a comment at the vote which implied that she only voted for Heath because she had already given her word to the two boys. She said something like “if you had come to me earlier with a plan, you would have had my agreement”. I am sure that she is also weighing up the cost of going against the majority at this stage.

      Two questions:
      1. Why on earth don’t the three champion girls seem to know anything about Benji’s big lies? Wouldn’t that be the first thing you would talk about if you were trying to save yourself. Are Heath and Fenella too nice to do that?

      2. What has happened to the chicken? Did it go home with Moana?

    • Totally Sioux Denim – I don’t get why Heath didn’t try to round up the contenders and do the ‘merge must be soon. Lydia is a machine. Yes it is nice to win challenges, but hey – it is halfway. Merge must be real soon now. We owe it to ourselves to take her out NOW while we can, because after merge she will be unstoppable.’
      Surely that had some potential?

      • No, Fenella made a big deal last night about having to talk to the Champion girls and figure them out … and she really should’ve been doing that days ago. I don’t see any of the Champions girls turning on each other, or even giving away any secrets, but Fenella should’ve at least tried, you know?

    • And lazy gameplay like hers never gets rewarded in front of the jury (IIRC, lazy gameplay usually gets called out by the jury members).

      Maybe she just got stuck on a tribe (and then a second tribe) filled with alpha personalities, but I think Shonee is trying to fly under the radar, but she’s flown *too* low. I don’t remember her contribuing anything for the last fifteen episodes, you know? She hasn’t done much plotting or won any challenges or even shown any skill around camp.

      Although at this point, she’d probably make a half-decent goat.

      • Yes, I don’t think it a deliberate strategy to be so ineffective. But you would have to be careful (at this point) to consider her a goat. She seems to be liked well enough, and many might consider her “nice” enough to win over someone who has engineered their own exit.

        We haven’t seen any of it, but surely the champions are noticing her lack of work ethic, and they wouldn’t respect her for it. Interesting that she considers a long-running, very popular show (Antiques Roadshow) as the height of boredom. If she has nothing to do, she could be practising her fire skills, learning to fish…or even hunting for an idol. That segment about being bored made her look like a Year 10 student on a museum excursion.

        • It didn’t help that they chose to show some of the most inane conversations going on at the Champions tribe. Mat marvelling at the idea of wheels on suit-cases was almost as riveting as when they were on the beach discussing their favourite planets (how many have they visited? Steve notwithstanding, since he seems to be a long way from Earth).

          I almost felt sorry for Shonee, there.

          • Windsong, if she was interesting, she could have turned it into a game. They could have said, SHE was boring for just laying there.
            Shopping trolleys
            Wheelchairs.
            Trolley dolly. Your go…..

        • If Snonee’s thoughts were out loud, they would know she wasn’t nice. She’s pretty so she thinks that makes her better than them.

      • She just looks down her nose, calling people randoms and saying their conversations are boring. If she’s so interesting whi isn’t she livening up the camp?

  4. I was surprised that it took Sam so long to solve the puzzle, and in the end it was Brian (!) who solved it and told him. Sam and Shonee very quickly found the two tribe names but for some reason couldn’t count the spaces to see where they fit. I thought they would place those two names within seconds, and then spent longer trying to work out the words in between. It is a basic rule of anagrams to keep moving the letters around, because then a word can jump out at you. Standing and staring at static letters just doesn’t work as well.

    Maybe i am getting cynical, but could there have been a deliberate hesitation there, trying not to show off. But he cut it fine, if that was the plan.

    • I think it’d be a left brain, right brain thing. Like, he’s a physicist, so he’s great with numbers, but not so great with words? I only say that because I’m the opposite — bad with numbers but a crossword-solving champion. It was surprising, though, to see Sam get so rattled by it. I imagine it was a shock to him.

  5. So who will be first gone after the merge? And will Lydia be true to the champions, try to pull Robbie away from Benji, or will the other champions think she has jumped ship? She is playing a dangerous game at the moment.

  6. So some things were made clear last night such as Lydia isn’t going to turn on Robbie (like we didn’t know that). But it’s official, Shonee isn’t playing dumb, she really is that thick. I had to laugh when she was whinging about the conversation being so boring, I agree with Windsong it wasn’t the most scintillating conversation but Shonee compared it to the Contenders “where every second word was dick” because yeah that sounds like witty and sparkling conversation.

  7. Wow, that fire those guys built nearly burnt the whole island down. It got very big very fast. They were lucky not to get stung by all those bees poking them like that. I thought it was funny showing them eating honey when honey was all over the news yesterday. That honey would not have been adulterated.
    So they merge tonight so soon after the tribe swap. They should have done the tribe swap a lot earlier.

  8. As always JB – I am totally with you. Yes, the wheels conversation wasn’t the highest level of repartee, but really? Yearning for a time when every second word was “dick”? Lovely.
    I find her laziness deeply annoying. As the non-pretty one who has to get on with stuff, that just GRATES on me – so I am probably motivated by jealousy.

    Plus, the other thing that TOTALLY grates on me about Shonee is that she is a “pro-skater’s wife”. I get that maybe she thinks that it is a fly under the radar thing, but really? Could she have found some less annoying way to categorise herself as a non-threat?

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