Australian Survivor: Redemption Report Card - Week 5
Featuring fuel prices, Lottie, Motown songs, Richard and Mark
A classic Sunday-Monday-Tuesday Week 5 of Australian Survivor: Redemption sees the season hit top gear. Let’s break it down.
Fuel Prices
Grade: D
We begin the week with a merge and a classic Survivor game of Balance-a-Barrel™.
It’s a challenge that allows not only the winner to receive a car, but also for David to segue from his unusual pronunciation of ‘Barren’ (Berren) to an unusual pronunciation of ‘Barrel’ (Berrel).
I will personally give ten shiny dollars (each!) to any group of players who forms an alliance called ‘The Barracking Baronesses’ or ‘The Barricade of Barristers’ or some similar David accent-accentuating handle.
Nevertheless, in a sign that he’s really maturing into the hosting role, David quickly grows bored with the challenge after not enough players prove inept at it, and suddenly declares that they all have to do it with no ropes, on one foot, eyes closed, while balancing a turtle on your nose and being sprayed with a hose.
Chaos ensues, everybody’s barrel topples, and Sally wins the car! She immediately starts crying, due to the future trajectory of fuel prices, so David decrees that the players can all have a mighty feast as well.
Lottie
Grade: C-
Returning to the merge camp, Caleb promises he’s going to do something new and shake the game up! That something new? Catching a fish in his bare hands! This is precisely the kind of behaviour that is failing to dispel fan theories that he’s a Gollum.
As the returnees bond in the dark, the improbable brains trust of Sally and Lottie come together, and agree on one thing.
“What we absolutely need to do is get rid of the returnees!”
“Yes! They’re way too dangerous to keep. An urgent priority.”
“Agreed! Vote them out immediately.”
“So... Jackson next?”
After a quick game of Hold Dem Poles™, the highlight of which was Caleb cackling at David like he’d just challenged him to a fiddling contest for his soul, Brooke wins immunity.
At Tribal Council, a lotta Lottie votes sees her go home, but not before there’s also a lotta talk about underdogs, big dogs, top dogs, and dirty dogs.
Less Survivor: Redemption, more Survivor: Red Setter.
Motown Songs
Grade: B
After the Lottie vote-out, Mark consoles Caleb, who was once again left in the dark. He complains about ‘Being on the outside of the blindside, not the inside’, which is not only fair, but also sounds like a chorus from a catchy-as-fuck 1960s Motown song.
Simon, meanwhile, is feeling confident. How confident? He’s cobbled together a fake idol, which, knowing Simon’s history in the game, seems like a less than wise ploy to be dabbling in. Worse still, he also dabbles in some wordplay, which feels even more dangerous for him, specifically. He strains mightily to explain why he calls Mark the ‘soul collector’, not only because he carries so many pairs of shoes (or ‘soles’) wherever he goes, but also because he’s collecting the souls (or ‘souls’) of everybody he votes out of the game.
Look, it’s a tough gag to make work, but Simon argues that he is now ‘an unstoppable force’ in this game. Perhaps I’d go so far as to say he is now a punstoppable force in this game. In that I’d like to force him to stop with the puns.
Still, it’s time for the immunity challenge, a classic game of Tether-Buoy’n’Net-Crawl’n’Shelf-Toss’n’Puzzle-Ramp-Roll™.
David indulges in some chat about balls, to go with the previous challenge’s pole banter, his host innuendo game finally kicking into gear, post-merge.
Eventually, it’s Simon who lands his balls on a shelf to win. (Balls on a shelf, of course, is the increasingly popular alternative to Elf on a Shelf.)
Richard
Grade: C-
Around about now is when Ben and Jackson decide that it’s time for the newbies to step up and take down the returnees. An exciting idea, of course, but I’m not convinced that duo is the pair I want leading the resistance.
(It is the returnees, themselves, who dub the newbies the ‘resistance’, which just goes to show their boldness. If I were ever on Survivor, I’d never refer to my opposing alliance as ‘the resistance’. Because most of the time resistances are cooler than whoever they’re resisting. And I really don’t need to appear any less cool than my baseline level. (This, BTW, is my application for the show, producers. Get on board!))
The point is that, after these nitwits gather the numbers, Richard decides to bring Simon in on the plan.
Word obviously then gets back to Mark (via a look from Brooke (that’s all it took!)), who reluctantly abandons his plan of voting out Blanche. (A good thing, too, because he was inexplicably calling it ‘the Blanche plan’ when ‘the Planche’ was right there.)
Off to Tribal Council, where Rich tries to explain the situation in rhyme.
“I thought it was going to be an evolution,” he says. “Turns out it’s more of a revolution!”
(Laughter)
Rich, emboldened, riffs on the idea. “I thought it was going to be a blindside. Turns out it’s a… mind-glide.”
(Some shoulder shrugging and the iffy hand gesture at that one.)
Rich, desperate and sweating, tries one last time. “I thought it was going to be Mark. Turns out it’s me going dark.”
For, yes, after bluffing with Simon’s fake idol, whispering to Simon and Brooke, bluffing some more, whispering to Keeley, having a one-on-one chat with Ben, whispering to Caleb, playing his real idol, then having a post-vote mic drop moment, Mark sends Richard packing.
Put out your blazers.
Mark
Grade: B+
After Rich goes, the Dummy Newbie Alliance all head back to camp and climb into the one clown car in which they all sleep.
Then it’s a reward challenge, a classic game of Slingshot! (Sandbag-Keygrab Edition)™. The reward challenge is high tea.
That’s swiftly followed by the immunity challenge - a classic game of BowBall!™, which goes for over an hour! At least, if the rice hourglass David is using to time the challenge is to be believed, which it almost certainly isn’t.
Brooke obviously wins the challenge and the returnees (plus Keeley, who is now an honorary returnee on the basis of her love for returning her library books on time) have to come up with a scheme to survive the vote from the Dummy Newbie Alliance.
Turns out they’re in luck, because the Dummy Newbie Alliance are so dumb (and/or newbie) that they don’t even understand the purpose of splitting votes. They choose to inexplicably split 5-2 on the returnees, apparently not realising that two is a number that is less than four. Worse still, the five (which is more than four) will become four when Caleb jumps to the returnees, a number which, most mathematicians agree, is less than four (the returnees plus Keeley) plus one (Caleb).
Look, it’s the kind of very basic arithmetic that six-year-olds have typically mastered, so we can’t really expect Ben and Jackson to have it sorted.
Just to make sure they have the crucial Caleb vote, the returnees (plus Keeley) agree to vote for whoever Caleb wants to vote for. This is the key to surviving the vote and is very important. Mark therefore has the following conversation with him:
“Hey, Caleb. We’ll vote for whoever you want.”
“I want Jackson.”
“Absolutely. Whoever you want. So, Ben, was it?”
“Uh… sure.” (eyes spin in his head like a cartoon character who’s been bonked on the head by an anvil)
And so, everything works out perfectly for Mark. The Dummy Newbies split incorrectly. The returnees plus Keeley stick together to vote out Ben.
Oh, except, yeah. Caleb, sick of nobody listening to him, decides he’s not voting with Mark after all. He votes for Mark, sending him home.
Told you Caleb would become more pigheaded.