Australia Survivor: Redemption Report Card - Week 3
Featuring Mudball™, Don, Lyndl, being individuals and Tez
Week 3 of Australian Survivor: Redemption. Let’s get into it.
Mudball™
Grade: A
Don returns from last week’s tribal council in which he received far more votes than expected (ie, more than zero), declaring he needs to go back to Survivor 101. Frankly, I’m not entirely convinced Don has all the prerequisites for Survivor 101. Faith also has a chat with Mark that she requests ends with an ‘awkward cuddle’. Mark, a graduate of Awkward Cuddles 101, complies.
After that, though, it’s time for a reward challenge - a classic game of Mudball™. Bloody hell, it’s a great game, Mudball™ - just people scurrying under nets in time to gather balls then tossing those balls back into nets. Proper sport. I’d happily watch a Mudball™ spinoff league - just the greatest Mudball™ers from all around the world, competing on the world stage. Get it into the Olympics. Summer and winter.
For now, however, instead of playing for gold medals, these Survivor contestants are playing for something even better. Namely, meat pies. Awesome stuff. Although, as much as I enjoy a good game of Mudball™, I would also someday very much like to see a pie reward based on which tribe can recite the most digits of pi.
Before the winning tribe (I dunno, Bounty maybe?) can get to the pies, however, David has a surprise. “Drop your buffs!” he says, then laboriously works his way through every single contestant’s fresh buff draw.
One by one, they march up and draw their buff. One by one, they march to their new tribe. It’s mostly just a clean swap - Bounty becomes Barren, Barren becomes Bounty with a few stragglers here and there (eg Ben - you can’t spell Barren without Ben).
However, in all the confusion over the new tribes, David seemingly forgets his most important duty: ie, explaining clearly who got the pies!
Don
Grade: D
Turns out that it was the individual players of the winning tribe who won the pies, not the greater concept of the pie-winning tribe. As such, pies are delivered to former Bounty members on both camps.
Richard, who, along with Lyndl is the only Original Bounty remaining on New Bounty, sees this as an opportunity to worm his way into the new tribe. He cleverly offers share options in his pie to members of the tribe willing to invest in a pie-eating paradigm shift, an offer that is enthusiastically subscribed to by savvy early investors.
Will it help? Who knows. Because time is instead taken up by the formation of a Three Wise Women alliance, featuring Keeley, Faith and Sally. They have in their sights Mark and his key allies, Don and Tez. A classic Three Wise Women v Corn Chip Cartel face-off. How many times have we seen this in Survivor?
The point is that, after an obvious immunity defeat in a game of Rainy Tower Climb Bag Throw™, Keeley pulls Rich aside to discuss the prospect of blindsiding Mark.
KEELEY: If you’re on board we can do it.
RICHARD: Oh, I’m on loads of boards
Sure, there’s a bit of confusion with Sally telling Don to target Mark and Don telling Mark that Sally’s targeting him and people getting generally fed up with Caleb’s bullshit, but ultimately, it’s the Three Wise Women, led by Keeley, who get their way, springing Don’s name on Rich at Tribal Council while Tez and Caleb squabble about goodness knows what.
The votes come in, and Don goes home. In retrospect, we should have known the Don was doomed when the tribe received those inexplicable symbolic oranges along with the pies as part of reward.
Is Don. Is voted out.
Lyndl
Grade: C
After the Don blindside, Mark is feeling emasculated (emarksculated? is that anything? no), as he realises the Three Wise Women now have all the power.
Over on the other tribe, Blanche is bonding with her new tribemates, most notably Aisha, to whom she spills all the tea (admittedly, on Survivor, tea is mostly just leftover sock-cleaning water). Great to see Blanche’s game being so dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Blanche is keen to target Brooke, so follows her around the jungle to make sure that she doesn’t find an idol. Brooke then immediately finds an idol, a discovery that Blanche doesn’t at all notice.
Time for the immunity challenge, a classic game of Ladder Carry Impossible Anagrams!™ How impossible is it? Well, that depends on whether you understand how apostrophes work.
In the end, Simon, of all people, eventually powers the team to victory by scrambling together the correct solution, shouting out ‘I can spell!’ in triumph. I mean, yes, technically it was Aisha who solved it. But was there ever any doubt about her spelling ability? I suspect not.
Mark joins the Three Wise Women, who, as a collective, are also known as Head Office. Maybe? Honestly, I’m losing track. They decide it’s time to get rid of Tez, who is concerned he’s not being taken seriously.
He decides that the best way to be taken seriously is to throw Faith’s name out to Rich and Lyndl, and then go tell Faith that’s what he did. Which is interesting gameplay for sure. Serious gameplay? Well, that’s for the viewer to decide.
Rich tells Tez he loves the plan, but Tez is less convinced. Especially since he’s just told Faith about it and is therefore now on the chopping block himself. Wonderful that Tez has no faith in his plan to ensure there’s no more Faith. By the time, he gets to Tribal Council, he’s so flustered that he’s on the brink of asking David who he should vote for.
As, indeed, is everybody else, with votes flying all over the place. In the end, though, it’s Lyndl who goes home, with Tez surviving another day. A classic Tez tease episode.
Being Individuals
Grade: F
Back at New Barren (?), Jackson tells us, the loyal viewers, that he got the best tribe swap of all time, and that he could ‘sit pretty’ all the way through to merge, by just being one of the numbers, but he doesn’t want to do that.
Jackson, my large friend, here’s a tip: just be a number and sit pretty all the way through to merge.
Anyway, he’s not doing that. He talks to Simon, and this pair of nitwits decide the one thing this season needs is more named alliances. So they gather together, Ben, Brooke, and, uh, I dunno, Loz, and call themselves Beauty and the Beasts. “Bags being a beest!” says Simon, spelling it incorrectly in his mind.
Time for the immunity challenge, a classic game of Cross-Tribal Paired Ball Hold™. David informs us that both tribes are going to Tribal Council and that they’re playing in pairs (one from each tribe) for individual immunity.
Despite spending thirty-five minutes watching everybody draw their buffs two nights earlier, we don’t get to see how the pairs are chosen here. Which is a shame, because I definitely wanted it to be something other than random. Why? Because Tez and Blanche are paired together and that’s a beautiful combination.
Other combinations are not quite as beautiful. Less keen on teamwork are Mark and Jackson, for example, who are too individualistic and annoying.
They’re first out when David reveals he also has the JLP clause in his hosting contract that allows him to change the rules whenever he’s bored with a challenge or is late for a gym session.
Eventually, Simon and Faith outlast Rich and Brooke to win individual immunities, David throws the necklaces at them and scurries off to do some bench presses.
Tez
Grade: D+
David’s hasty departure means that neither tribe has a clue what’s going on, whether it’s both tribes voting together for one person, or each tribe voting out one apiece, or some kind of inscrutable tribal electoral college system that is open to trivial manipulation by partisan billionaires.
Each tribe therefore hastily cobbles together plans for all eventualities, with Tez in so much danger on his tribe that he takes on Caleb (!) as a mentor. Wild days, indeed.
Eventually, they wander in and David kicks things off with a question to Brooke. “You’ve actually been to a double tribal council before, right?” he says. “On All Stars?”
Brooke confirms this is true.
“Good season that one,” continues David. “Good winner.” And he does the ‘who has two thumbs’ point at himself.
Point made, he explains the rules. Each tribe will elect a ‘hero’ to make fire. The winner of the fire challenge will ensure their tribe’s complete safety. The other tribe will vote somebody out.
This throws everybody’s plans into chaos, because not a single one of them watched the Australia v The World season. Turns out both tribes want to vote somebody out, and so chat begins on who is best at throwing fire challenges, and they break off and whisper to one another.
David is pretty quickly fed up with this. “If you don’t name your heroes,” he suddenly declares. “I will turn this Tribal Council around and go home.” And he starts counting to ten.
Simon asks if he can give his immunity necklace to Rich to protect him. When told that he can, he doesn’t do so, and instead declares that he’ll make fire. Mark decides that he’ll also make fire. Simon then starts wasting even more time, removing his immunity necklace, rolling his sleeves up, dousing himself in petrol, until David is once more fed up. Gym closes at 10pm, guys!
Anyway, it turns out that neither of these idiots have any idea how to throw a fire challenge, instead swiftly mustering gargantuan conflagrations. Earlier in the episode, Tez had spoken about how his life motto is to just ‘keep on failing’ or some damn thing. He could have taught these two a lesson.
Simon eventually wins and his entire tribe is permitted to return to camp. Before he goes, Simon asks David if he can give Rich his immunity necklace, despite that obviously being against the spirit of how immunity works.
“I honestly don’t give a shit,” mutters an exhausted David.
So Simon does, and Tez goes home.