Australian Survivor: Redemption Report Card - Week 7
Featuring bewildering storms, Cameron, maggots, Brooke and Keeley
The penultimate week of Australian Survivor: Redemption. We’re in the endgame now, and some of the players’ brains are simply running out.
Bewildering Storms
Grade: B+
Some great lead-ins to this week’s Australian Survivor episodes. First, on Sunday, during a typically dreadful 10 News+ report, we had one of the newscasters outrageously oversimplifying a recent scientific announcement: “Tell me, Doctor. Why is 7am the best time for everybody to do their exercise?”
Only for this heroic doctor to not have it whatsoever: “There’s a simple explanation for that. It isn’t. These things vary across the population.”
The doctor then continued on in this vein throughout the conversation. A titan of not putting up with nonsense. Or perhaps a rebel. Either way, get him on Titans v Rebels 2.
Anyway, despite having just won a majority in the most recently concluded vote, Cameron starts scheming up a bewildering storm that nobody can quite follow, but laughing uproariously as he does so. A twisted Joker-like figure.
Brooke, however, now in the minority, gives a hearty thumbs-up to whatever it is that Cam is proposing. “I’d be more than happy to take you to the end,” she advises him, which should be a rather large red flag that you may not have quite been playing the greatest game in Survivor history. Cam doesn’t mind. He explodes in laughter at the very idea he’s a goat.
But suddenly, it’s time for a reward challenge, for more IKEA vouchers (so see last week’s jokes)! It’s a classic game of Knot Disentangle Muddy Bean Bag Toss™ that Cam wins comfortably.
Befitting his crazy schemes status, Cam then takes Sally and Keeley on the reward, inexplicably leaving poor old Loz behind to deal with the predictable suggestions that she might now be willing to vote out Cam? Make a big move?
Loz, however, is having none of it, instead asking all the boring questions like ‘how would this proposed plan benefit my game?’ Yawn. Grow up, Loz.
‘By what method might I win this $500K game I’m playing?’
Soooo dull.
Cameron
Grade: C+
Onto the immunity challenge, a classic game of Knees Bent Ball Balancer™. It’s an opportunity for Cam, who is remarkably good at the challenge, to yammer on endlessly and continue to annoy the living heck out of everybody, but in a manner that tickles him no end.
Eventually, even David gets irritated, and starts making up new rules.
“Hands on head,” he decrees. “Interlock your fingers. Close your eyelids 30%. Elbows at 70 degrees. Stop talking endless bollocks at your opponents.”
It’s the last restriction that dooms Cam, and Keeley goes on to win immunity, putting Brooke under pressure. A challenge beast finally not winning immunity one vote after the newbies finally won a hard-earned 4-3 majority? Perfect time to get rid of her, right?
Wrong. Instead, at a rainy tribal council, talk soon turns (as it so often does) to the story of Icarus.
“You’re telling me a dude flew?!” laughs Cam. “To the sun!?!” (laughs uproariously at the very notion) “How did he even breathe?” (continues laughing) “I hope he had some SPF-50+ sunscreen.” (still more laughter)
And so on. It’s enough to see Cam sent home in a unanimous vote, but laughing cheerily, even as his torch is snuffed.
A truly dreadful vote from the underdogs. Yes, Cameron might be annoying enough to justify it. Perhaps. But if he is that annoying, how furious will the jury be with them all?
Maggots
Grade: D
The Monday night episode is preceded by a wheel spin on Deal or No Deal. To which I say, no.
Deal or No Deal is a simple game. You choose a briefcase from a future Duchess of Sussex, then spend half an hour opening more cases and negotiating with The Banker, a voiceless embodiment of shared contempt for the finance industry, then take your winnings home. That’s it.
There is no need to burden such a simple concept with needless extras (eg wheels, islands).
Similarly, there’s no need to burden Survivor with needless fly larvae. And yet, that’s what we get, with the players waking up to a visit from the Maggot Fairy.
After a Classic Caleb Maggot Freakout Dance™, he’s warned by Sally that he’s getting on Brooke’s nerves, and it’s genuinely heartbreaking that he did not know that doing a maggot dance was annoying.
Although, perhaps Sally’s not the best judge of where everybody stands right now, given that, as this week goes on, there’s growing evidence that the maggots ate her cerebral cortex.
Nevertheless, there is a ceremonial burning of the maggots and all the clothes with which they came in contact. (This includes a replica of Don’s hat, which the producers provide, as a bit of a laugh.)
The maggots scream as they burn, as you’d hope.
Brooke
Grade: B
Suddenly, it’s time for the immunity challenge, a classic game of Rope Stretch Spelling Bee™! The words they’re spelling? ‘Final Five’.
It’s typically maddening (David: “You’ve been doing this challenge for an hour now. So to make it more difficult you have to put the next block down while having screaming maggots in your clothes.”) but, once again, it’s Keeley who comes good, earning immunity yet again.
At around this point, pretty much everybody forgets how to count to six. Jackson bemoans that the ‘underdogs’ have all the power, when, in fact, they have three votes out of the previously mentioned six. Which would, in accordance with the tenets of subtraction, be identical to the numbers he, Keeley and Brooke would have.
Muddling matters further is Sally, who, in a desperate search for a big move, comes up with a series of plans, each more convoluted and brain-broken than the last. So much so that I still don’t quite understand what, exactly, she was arguing for. But definitely the dumbest plans since… well, the previous night.
(I should also point out that Sally has the other half of Brooke’s half-idol. Not that Brooke knows this, because Caleb has deduced the half-idol’s existence and is pretending he has a half as well. A half fake-idol. Or a fake half-idol. Whichever works. Either way, I think I’ve officially resubscribed to Caleb’s YouTube channel and am all aboard the Caleb Convoy.)
“Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a Caleb Convoy.”
The point is that, despite all the bluster, Brooke is indeed voted out, saving my head from exploding at back-to-back missed obvious votes.
What if the biggest move was to not listen to producers endlessly egging you on to make big moves when small and normal moves would win you the game?
Keeley
Grade: A
Tuesday night’s Australian Survivor is preceded by a Millionaire Hot Seat in which somebody claims the Beckett play was called ‘Waiting For Poirot’. So that’s very much the vibe of the evening.
The players return after Brooke’s vote-out, amazed at how dark it is.
Jackson and Keeley - now calling themselves ‘The Kaputs’ - despair at being 3-2 down in the numbers. An odd reaction considering they did nothing when the vote was 3-3. Do these players have no conception of the forward march of time?
Caleb, meanwhile, is delighted. He explains how his goal the entire game had been to eliminate all the returnees. “On day one, I looked around and saw that I was surrounded by some of the best players in Survivor history, as well as Simon, and I knew I had to get them out.”
There’s also some more half-idol chatter, but that’s interrupted by another infuriating immunity challenge, this time a classic game of Stacking Maze Claw™!
At one point, when David is busy counting his biceps, Keeley commentates her own progress in the challenge. Great stuff from Keeley. Started as a player, joined the returnees, now hosting the show. Speed-running David’s entire career. The Golden Goddess. Get her in a season of DONDI.
Not that it helps in the challenge, which Jackson wins. The question then becomes one of whether Keeley and Jackson can drag another random player into their alliance. This new alliance (‘So hot. Like a sunrise.’) would, of course, then be known as Rando and Kaput.
(I am not apologising for this terrible joke.)
But no such alliance is forthcoming. Instead, Sally, still on a quest for baffling big moves, tells Keeley at Tribal Council that if she (Keeley) shares her (Keeley’s, previously Brooke’s) half idol with her (Sally) then she (Sally) will play the whole idol for her (Keeley).
“Okey-dokey,” says Keeley and hands over her half idol. And then Sally doesn’t play it for anybody, and Keeley goes home.
Sally, with the very big move of ensuring Keeley will never, ever vote for her.
