47 Comments

  1. ‘Let’s see how this stupid Exile Beach thing plays out’ LOL. I won’t miss her, but you never know she may just survive.

  2. Foxtel rebooted my IQ 20mins in and wiped the beginning. Can someone tell me why both players came back from Exile please.

    • They didn’t even have to do an Exile challenge. JLP did the tribe swap then brought Shonee and Zac in. They got buffs and that was it! No advantages or idols sighted

      • Thanks Juz. At the risk of sounding like a crazed dog with a bone it just will not give up 😜 … OMG Exile was used to save Shonee. Why else would they have done that? She was gone. And now she’s been able to boot Abby so I still have to see and hear her. Ugh. I was really enjoying this until the fix. Total contempt for the audience, especially as the fix is so blatantly obvious. Between this series and US I think I’ll be done for a few years.

        • They do always have a non-elimination episode around this time. In Shonee’s first season it was Tegan who went to a Exile and, umm, I forget who else

          • As I believe I said if the return from Exile is a puzzle or non strength I will sign up to the conspiracy theorists that say Shonee was saved. When it wasn’t even a CHALLENGE to get back in, but they just got calmly allocated back to tribes, it makes me sign up even more!
            Just walked back in after a night on Exile. What’s that about? Disappointing.

    • OMG I utterly loved that – Mo and Phoebe and Sharn winning. So for all the talk of STRENGTH you lost out. And in the immunity challenge you lost out to a nerd with a puzzle skill. Absolutely loved that.

      Nick the player I have not enjoyed much, but Nick the podcaster is great. However, that episode gave me great pleasure and I really liked him getting the advantage AND winning at the puzzle. David was greatin the challenge but muted by being on the winning team!

      I don’t understand why someone like AK is still around – he doesn’t seem to have much to offer other than throwing skills and I did expect that maybe he would ace puzzles but he was utterly clueless. Abbey’s fixation on killing Shonee meant she wasn’t looking around for other options, but I think given her strength if she had suggested AK she would have had a much better chance of survival. It became a You or Me debate.

      That yellow team was pretty hopeless at the puzzle and just yelled, whereas Nick was strategising from the get go and was able to tell the team how the puzzle was set up, so they didn’t waste time at the end.
      Also on that puzzle – Locky is a total BEAST. WOW – so strong. I was very impressed by Nick, but given the later parts of the game where strength is less important – TARGET! wow. he looked really good.

      • I remember the last time Locky played, he was a challenge beast. I couldn’t help but like the guy in a muscly, alpha-male kind of way.

  3. The new tribes:
    Yellow: John, Mat, Locky, Shonee, Flick, Brooke, Abs, AK, Lydia, Harry.
    Green: Nick, Phoebe, David, Jacquie, Tarzan, Moana, Sharn, Zac, Lee
    Sneaky Nick, grabbing that advantage before everyone realised.
    So happy we finally gets a puzzle to do

  4. Now this is why Australian productions annoy me. The producers want to keep two players in, so they just change the rules. Like in TAR Aus. 😫.
    I am glad that ai am only half watching because even then it’s p*****d me off that Shonee and the other one were just put straight back in the game. Hell, why bother with evictions. Why not being Henry back?

  5. Honestly, I’d like to see Henry come back before either Shonee or Zach.

    But you know, props to Shonee. She’s been on the chopping block, three tribals in a row, and the girl is damn near unkillable. She’s not a challenge threat and she’s not really important to anybody’s alliance, so I imagine, it’s her social game. She seems rather good at manipulating people into doing exactly what she wants them to do, while saving her own skin. I appreciate that, even if I find her obnoxious.

    I think it makes her a bit of a threat, but I don’t think the other players will do much about her until merge.

  6. Well played, Shonee. Of course it makes sense to get rid of Abbey. She is too close to the other Sporties. And even if Locky’s tribe loses the next few challenges, they can just get rid of Lydia, John etc and make it to the merge with their group intact

  7. I, too, am in the dislike-Shonee camp but I am also in the dislike-Abbey-more camp so I appreciate the producers efforts to stop this stupid and boring Strong-Uber-alles chant that was taking over the show.
    And to give all the players their due, the producers only gave them the space and the opportunity. Shonee (assuming it was all her) had to make it happen.
    If Abbey and Lydia’s social game had been stronger, this couldn’t have happened.
    The voting showed how weak their game really was (remember, 2 votes for Lydia as well).
    Given that they have been here before, how dumb are they.

    • Abbey only had six weeks between games. It’s interesting because she actually did change her strategy between the two – she just went the wrong way. Last season she was quickly lured from Steve Bradbury’s Sporty Alliance to join underdogs Luke, David, Pia and Janine. Having been beaten by Pia she then realised what a threat social players are, so for All Stars she switched back to Sporty. Really this time she was on the wrong side of the numbers.

      • It may just be the edit, but I was surprised the Meatheads don’t seem to have reached out to Mat. You’d think he’d be their number one pick.

        I doubt the producers helped Shonee. There’d be serious criminal and civil penalties if they did and it only takes one poorly paid production assistant or outraged contestant to spill the beans.

        The US show has the whole series of challenges, rewards, idols, advantages, twists and non-elimination rounds written down and legally notarised before filming starts because they don’t want to get sued or prosecuted. I’d be astonished if Shine don’t do exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons.

        The usual allegations of rigging aside, I don’t think a double exile and automatic return is the best day at the office production has ever had. It’s ridiculous that Shonee and Zach get to waltz back into contention, without any effort on their part, while Henry and Abbey are gone for good.

        • Yeah, one early season of TAR when one team missed winning the end-of-leg prize (it was a trip to England or something) because of a one-minute production error, one of the team-members threatened to sue … so the producers caved, awarded them the trip too, and quickly rewrote the rules for future seasons.

          Sure, sometimes the contrived production stunts are entirely legally possible (there in the show’s contract), but that doesn’t make them less contrived or stupid. I’m looking right at last year’s TAR.

        • But wasn’t letting Shonee and the guy straight back in the game after an eviction, help?
          Did they show other contestants asking each other, “wtf?”.
          Fair enough if we can see the programme in advance. Or if they tell everyone, “This is a double eviction, but if we don’t like who you choose, we reserve the right to put them back in”. They didn’t even battle for re entry.🤬

          I preferred strong blond girl to whiney blond girl. Shonee has a whiney voice.

          • She does have a whiny voice. I can completely understand why they’re so determined to get rid of her.

          • Someone suggested online that they could at least have made Shonee and Zac new tribe leaders and made them schoolyard pick. That would have been fun to watch at least. I don’t think it was rigged, just poorly thought out

          • If there’s a fixed list of twists etc etc, and that list says the first two exiles get out of jail free, then they haven’t helped Shonee. What they have done is make an incredibly stupid game design decision.

      • I take your point.
        But the best players don’t confine their social game to one alliance. They make sure they are liked by as many people (in all teams) as possible. That’s why David is so dangerous. Everyone knows that he is up to something and everyone likes him anyway.
        Abbey was a gloater. She doesn’t have a poker face and revels in the outcome of a plan, which inevitably results in the downfall of another.
        Lydia just has resting bitch face.

        • The best moment of last night’s episode was David talking us through his plan to approach Zach. “I need to take my time and play it cool before hitting him with the, Let’s Kill ‘Em All! strategy.”

          I laughed.

          I tend to agree with you re: Abbey. Nothing against her, personally, but she was so super-confident, in all her interview segments, last night. You should never be that confident while playing “Survivor”. Plus, Shonee (for all her obnoxiousness) did have a point. Her own tribe tried to knife her, three times. She’s obviously not going to be loyal to them, so it’s a smart plan to listen to her and keep her onside, and then, cut her loose at some point in the future when you don’t need her anymore.

    • I actually didn’t dislike Abbey, but when she was skiting at the start of the episode that she was in a strong position my husband and I were convinced she was GONE. I have some residual fondness for her as an AFLW player where she was really, really good. Watching her strength and accuracy was a treat, so I think I still like her because of that!

      Did not like her talking about “strength” all the time, but I appreciate that she felt blindsided by social players so decided to run back to sports people. Maybe third time if/when she plays she will get nuanced and find a way to play?

      I agree with Bobi though that she had a gloat face!

  8. I need to query something generally across the survivor world.
    Looking for idols is always seen as sus.
    Yet there must be an accepted time to go off with producer to do confessionals.
    Do contestants get to to hunt for idols while telling the tribe they are off with producers? Or is it more regulated? Are confessionals filmed in some kind of off limits spot where there are no idols? Does anyone know the mechanics of how it works?

    • “Are confessionals filmed in some kind of off limits spot where there are no idols?”

      The confessionals would *have* to be filmed in quite a far-away spot, because most of the players tend to be very candid and honest during those interviews. And it’s not something they would want the other players to accidentally overhear.

      • I don’t remember the details, but other players did overhear a confessional in a very early US season. Africa, maybe? Everyone was mortified and they’ve been very careful since.

    • Over the years, in US also, there have always been suspicious, convenient idol-finds for the big characters.
      Russell Hanz might have the idol record. Alan would know.

  9. I love rewatching Tribal when you know the outcome.
    All those nuanced side-eyes and the dramatic music. Gdung. 🎶
    Just love it.

  10. Gosh. Three alliances at once for Nick! 🤦‍♂️
    https://www.nowtolove.com.au/reality-tv/survivor/survivor-2020-abbey-eliminated-62634

    ‘So why did you vote 2 for Henry in the episode where it seemed like you were gunning for Shonee?



    We had a really good alliance going that no one’s seen much about and that alliance was myself, Lydia, Sharn, John, Nick. And Lee, Henry and Shonee were on the outer. Obviously Nick was playing those two sides and he was also in another alliance with Harry and Shonee. So Nick voted with us when we voted Michelle and in return to repay the favour I gave him my vote and voted Henry but you didn’t see any of that unfold. And then it was our decision as a collective in our alliance that Shonee would be next. So Nick and Harry, everyone was on board. Harry even voted Shonee at that Tribal Council but they don’t show that. It was kind of like a give and take from our relationship. You do something for me and I’ll do something for you – that was the way we were kind of working.

‘

  11. There are two things that really get my goat about Shonee. First is the fake pretence at the innocent little girl image ie wearing impractical dresses and a useless oversized hairclip and the babyish voice. Second is her smug assumption that she is staying through her own talents. She is only there because of luck, the choices of the tribe and an idol find. Yet she constantly preens herself that she is really an all-star, despite all evidence that everyone thinks she is not worth aligning with.

    Want her off my screen asap.

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