Australian Survivor Report Card - Australia v The World - Episode 7
Featuring spelling bees, French confessionals, buckets with holes, Rogue Tommi Content™ and preferential voting
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PREVIOUSLY ON AUSTRALIAN SURVIVOR: Beams were held, Cirie’s name was misspelled, and Kirby was felled
Spelling Bees
Grade: B
Okay, Ten News+, wrap it— oh, you have already.
Right. Without the infamous dilly-dallying of the much-missed The Project or its weeknight replacement dallier of dillies, Deal or No Deal, we’re straight into this week’s episode, where Cirie returns after the Kirby blindside, curious about how she got two votes, and who might have been behind it.
Now, Cirie might autocorrect to ‘Cutie’ on my iPhone, but that’s no reason to underestimate her. There’s no reason you can’t be cute and also be a formidable detective. Look at Lieutenant Columbo, for example.
So Cirie immediately works backwards from the dreadful spelling of her name on at least one of the votes and deduces that it looks very much like the kind of onomastic illiteracy that somebody like Luke might possess.
To confirm it, she runs a late night Survivor spelling bee! Lisa wins, obviously, and is delighted to win her prize from Cirie (one (1) nod of approval), but Luke’s consistent moniker mishaps seal him as the culprit. (He somehow manages to even misspell both Q and JT? (‘Cue’ and ‘Jai-tee’!))
French Confessionals
Grade: A-
Luke is not concerned, however. He has a plan.
“Let’s remain Aussie strong!” he proposes to Shonee and Janine.
“We’re only three out of eight,” points out Janine.
“Not if we let Lisa be an Aussie!” says Luke. “You know how New Zealanders love it when we let them be one of us! She can be our very own Phar Lap or Russell Crowe or Crowded House or Keith Urban or Rebecca Gibney or pavlova or…”
While all of this is going on, Kass remembers that she has a scroll from the previous episode. She opens it up and learns that it’s four tickets to a spa day!
“Boy,” says Shonee, wistfully. “I sure would enj—”
But it’s too late. Kass has already chosen Parv, Cirie and Tommi for the spa day, leaving all the Australians (including Lisa) behind.
Kass is so delighted with the spa reward that she does a confessional in French! Should everybody on the season be doing their confessionals in French? Yes. In fact, why not make it a challenge? It’s the closest we’re going to get to a puzzle.
Buckets With Holes
Grade: D
But now it’s time for the actual immunity challenge. A classic game of Bucket Holed Block Towers!
Before the challenge begins, JLP probes Parvati on whether the spa day helped bond those who participated in it. Parvati explains that yes, bridges were built, and Kass clarifies that the bridges were built with champagne, as so many modern structural engineers recommend.
(Of course, technically speaking, it’s not a champagne bridge unless it’s from a bridge in the Champagne region of France. Otherwise, it’s just a sparkling personal connection.)
Anyway, Tommi wins the challenge, which is the everyday childhood game we’ve all played thousands of times in which you must build a tower of blocks on one end of a seesaw while keeping a bucket with a hole in it full of enough water on the other end to prevent your tower from toppling. Oh, also you have to walk on a balance beam for some reason.
A very clever challenge that would immediately drive me infinitely insane.
Rogue Tommi Content™
Grade: D+
Weirdly, though, there’s still seventy minutes left in the episode. Which suggests something is afoot. That something? Rogue Tommi Content™.
(Is that content about rogue Tommi? Or is it Tommi content that’s a bit rogue? Yes.)
Tommi decides he wants to target Parv, and tries to rally the numbers. Lisa, in turn, drags in her fellow Australians, telling them that Parvati is the target and that they should all vote for her, but, by the way, she isn’t going to.
It’s the kind of behaviour that, once they actually head off to tribal council, triggers first question whispies! Before the opening remarks are out of JLP’s lips, everybody is up and running around, trying to work out who, exactly, is voting for whom.
Lisa is accused of being ‘sketch’, and tries to pivot to a joke about being so ‘sketch’ that she’s willing to ‘draw’ rocks, but everybody’s kinda sick of that gag by now.
Kass claims that the Australians are trying to cause chaos, and, as evidence, points to improbable tales of ‘drop bears’ that they’ve been spreading.
“Oh no,” says JLP. “Drop bears are very real. Very dangerous.”
Preferential Voting
Grade: A
Parvati pulls out her weaponry, wearing her immunity idol before the vote, and threatening Kass with the steal-an-idol after it. The latter is a bluff because the rules explicitly say that she has to steal the idol before the votes, but Kass doesn’t know that, and Parvati somehow convinces her to play the idol on Lisa instead of herself.
Also, there’s still half an hour left in the episode? What could possibly take that long? Perhaps the producers decided to show off to the international players the idea of preferential voting, and there’s a delay while they clarify how that works, and fly Antony Green in to call the result?
No. Turns out Kass is voted out, but there’s also another immediate immunity challenge (a classic game of Five-Ball Balance Board) and vote.
Luke wins immunity, which gives the remaining five the obvious opportunity to split on Cirie and Parvati and at least get rid of one of Parvati’s idols.
Or, alternatively, Lisa could suddenly threaten to quit? In order to save Tommi?
Luckily, JLP makes up some new quitting rules on the spot (‘if you quit, Lisa, you can’t be on the jury, we’ll still vote anyway, and also, uh, Survivor: New Zealand will be taken off the 10Play app’ ‘Wait. Survivor: New Zealand is on the 10Play app??’ ‘No. But if it was, we’d take it off’). So Lisa stays, and after a whole heap more whispers, Tommi inexplicably goes.
On the plus side, Lisa has probably just successfully won herself a spot at final tribal council. Playing on a whole other level is this great Australian player.
Dan vs The World
Right! I didn’t make plans for how the rules would work for this game if there was a double elimination. Luckily, my top two predictions at the end of the previous episode were Kass and Tommi, in that order, which I’m pretty sure means I can’t be beaten. Taryn from BlueSky had Tommi as her number one pick on the board, but Kass was way down at six. I therefore award myself the points for that round and stretch my overall lead to 4-1.
Here are my rankings for who I think is most likely to be voted out in the next episode from most likely to least likely.
Cirie (the others should surely just split their votes, right? Right??)
Shonee
Luke
Janine
Lisa
Parvati
Returning to the game from Redemption Rock, is Cat Jones, my co-host on the HitchPod podcast, which will shortly drop an episode on Ben-Hur! Have you seen Ben-Hur? It’s wild. Subscribe to the podcast to listen to us talk about chariot races and homoeroticism.
Anyway, here’s Cat’s prediction for who will go next, from most likely to least.
Lisa
Shonee
Luke
Janine
Cirie
Parvati
Can Cat’s return inspire the World Team to a strong finish as we enter the last few episodes? Let’s see.
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