Australia Survivor: Redemption Report Card - Week 4
Featuring Carrot in a Box™, Aisha, monkey fists, Succession and Faith
A Matildas-interrupted Week 4 of Australian Survivor: Redemption. Let’s focus on all the key angles, shall we?
Carrot In A Box™
Grade: B
We start the week on Sunday, as part of Channel Ten’s ongoing attempts to trick people into missing as much of this season as possible.
Mark and Keeley are at loggerheads over who should go next from their tribe - Richard or Caleb. Mark wants Richard to go and makes the case that he has been a disappointingly human CEO marathon runner, when viewers must surely have been expecting a full-on cartoon character. “We’ve been barely able to riff on him,” he whines. Keeley’s counter is that Caleb is a certified nutjob. So you can see both points of view.
Over on the other tribe, Aisha is keen to send Brooke home, oblivious to the fact she has both a) an idol, and b) the secret Beauty and the Beasts alliance surrounding her.
Still, there’s no time to fill Aisha in on that, because it’s time for a Reward Challenge - the classic Survivor* game of Carrot In A Box!
Jackson and Caleb are up first, with the latter talking furious smack to the former, who halfheartedly returns it. Frankly, I’m not convinced Jackson has any idea why he’s at war with Caleb. (Please ignore any greater current geopolitical implications of this comment.)
Brooke, meanwhile, proves she’s a savvy player, lying about letters from home, or some such. (“It’s a Q and a J and a F,” she claims, outlandishly, when, in fact, it’s a lemon tart.)
“This filthy lying maniac must go!” mutters Aisha.
Aisha
Grade: B-
Oh, also, it turns out that Blanche found a clue to an idol in her reward. Stop putting scrolls in food, you crazed producers! How many clues have been accidentally devoured this season? Survivor should not be a game for nibblers!
Blanche vows to sneakily search around camp for the idol. Unfortunately, her version of ‘sneaky’ is probing around camp with a giant magnifying glass like she’s Sherlock Holmes, so instead she gets Aisha in to help, explaining how while she was eating her peanut butter sandwich, she felt something unusual in there and pulled it out and on closer inspection, it appeared to be a tiny scroll, so she unrolled it and—
“Oh, wait,” said Aisha, reaching down beneath the log she’s sitting on. “I’ve found the idol.”
Off they head to the immunity challenge, a classic game of Human Centipede Table Roll’ems™!
I pretty quickly lose track of who is supposed to be throwing this challenge, until Aisha helpfully stands up and blatantly fumbles her balls off the table over and over again until the other tribe wins. Thank you, Aisha.
At Tribal Council, on the eve of the Oscars, Brooke is acting up a storm, pretending she’s resigned to her fate of going home. Aisha believes it, though, claiming her gut hasn’t lied to her so far. Cam’s gut, however, senses something is off and that Brooke’s being fishy.
Great gut-off between Cam and Aisha.
Brooke plays the idol and sends Aisha home, but not before Aisha takes some time to thank David, the producers, all the hard-working crew behind the scenes, her friends and family, the Academy…
“Wait,” says Blanche, suddenly. “Do you still have my idol in your pants?”
But the band are already playing Aisha off.
Monkey Fists
Grade: C+
In the aftermath of Aisha’s exit, Blanche reveals she just wants to bawl her eyes out. Come on, Blanche, bawling your eyes out (or, indeed, removing them in any way) is no way to prevent future blindsides.
Lottie, meanwhile, is furious with Simon for leaving her out of the vote. (clears throat) you might almost say that Simon is in a Lottie trouble!
(looks around nervously) I said, Simon is in a Lottie trouble.
(wipes brow, checks notes, drops them)
Not that it matters much, because the immunity challenge is up, and it’s a classic game of Puzzle Piece Gather’n’Monkey Fist™!
Just as it looks as if New Barren might be inexplicably throwing the challenge again, dropping puzzle pieces all over the place, Simon, one of the great monkey fisters of our time, lands it in the slot and pulls his team to victory.
(picks up notes, tries again) You might even say, Simon got himself out of a Lottie trouble.
Succession
Grade: A-
Time then for another New Bounty vote-off. Keeley continues to argue it should be Caleb, explaining patiently to Mark that he’s exactly the kind of player who, come merge, might jump off their train onto another one.
And full credit to Keeley. I can easily imagine Caleb jumping from a train to another train.
Caleb has plans of his own, though. Crazy plans, as you’d expect, that revolve around triggering a rock draw. It feels doomed to failure, as I’m not entirely convinced there are two people in the world willing to follow Caleb to rocks, let alone two others on his tribe.
But when they arrive at Tribal Council, David informs them that instead of one player being voted out of the game, three players will instead be sent to Redemption Beach.
“Redemption Beach? The beach after which Survivor:Redemption is named?!” asks a stunned Richard.
“Yes,” replies David. “It’s like the beach that makes you old in the movie Old.” He then goes on to explain the very simple rules covering every possible combination of votes, including the cases where one person is voted for, two people are voted for or three or more people are voted for, and the subrules that will apply in each scenario.
Luckily for Rich, this entire situation is exactly like every board meeting in his favourite TV show, Succession, and he quickly pivots his vote to have Kendall Keeley join Caleb and Sally on Redemption Beach.
It’s all a magnificent shitshow of stupidity. Next time, just make six fires, FFS.
Faith
Grade: B+
The promised Redemption Beach Party becomes a Redemption Key Party instead when Caleb finds a key, only to discover there are dozens of keys on the island and only one of them opens a box to an advantage in the challenge that will let them win their way back into the game.
That challenge? A classic game of Surfing Balance’em’Ups™, which Caleb wins, despite Keeley finding the winning key.
Caleb is glad to be off Redemption Beach, which he bizarrely claims was just like the moon, in that it was desolate and full of rocks and without oxygen and with 1/6th of the gravity of Earth.
But people don’t have time for Caleb’s (metaphorical and literal) lunacy. There’s another challenge, and the losing team gets Keeley and Sally back, who won’t have votes, but can be voted for.
“Oh, then it’s in our very obvious interest to throw the challenge, right, David?” says Brooke. “So, y’know, we can just vote one of them out?”
David pretends not to hear her point out this obvious game design flaw, and instead asks Sally how it feels to be in such a precarious bullshit situation.
“Feels pretty shit, David, thanks for asking,” says Sally.
But when Mark successfully throws the challenge (a classic game of Coconut Gather’n’Net™) with a wonderful feigned ‘oh, how heavy this empty basket is’, the vote evolves still further.
Mark, still haunted by ghosts, comes up with a variety of plans that twist and change at every turn. Keeley, still haunted by Caleb, reacts similarly.
They head to Tribal Council, where Mark pulls out a Ouija Board and consults the ancient spirits. Richard, who spent the pre-tribal portion of the episode explaining something called ‘the wave strategy’ makes it very literal when he poetically talks about one of his tribemates being swept out to sea and drowned. (Next week? Richard will unveil his New Wave strategy, as he switches into Depeche Mode.)
However, it is Mark who wins the day, having orchestrated a tied vote where Faith goes home on the revote. He reacts with typical delight.
Faith no more.
An Epic vote.