Last week, eighteen castaways were dropped onto a remote area of Samoa and kicked off Survivor epic 23rd season. The Savaii tribe was joined by former contestant Ozzy, who took to him like a duck to water, while the Upolu tribe greeted “dragon warrior” Coach with a mixture of disdain and indifference. Upolu ended up being the first tribe to go to Tribal Council, and they collectively decided that poetess Semhar talked a better game than she brought, and she was sent to RedIsle to await her first opponent.
We do get a brief glimpse of Semhar as she glooms and dooms about RedIsle, but I would at this point consider her the underdog in Duel #1, no matter who she ends up going against.
Immunity/Reward Challenge
I’ll start with this because most of the drama of Survivor tends to resolve on who emerges victorious, especially since the losing tribe has to cull one of its own number immediately thereafter. Here’s how it worked: four members of each tribe will unwind some long ribbons that are wrapped around a tall pole, which will then release a key that will be used to release four other members, who are shackled. Those four then must complete a puzzle involving pushing smaller crates around inside a larger box so that a larger crate is then freed from the rest. Winning tribe gets not only immunity but an assortment of pillows, blankets and a hammock, to ease the discomfort of sleeping on hard bamboo.
The unwrapping part proves to be more complicated then you’d think, and Savaii struggles early, dancing around it like a whacked-out maypole. Cochran particularly struggles, which makes me gulp. Upolu gets the key first with a big lead. However, the box-puzzle is also as complicated as it is cumbersome. Pushing them around takes a lot of strength, and the four men doing the task for Savaii appeared to be much stronger physically. In the end, brute strength save the day for Savaii, and they win the challenge, avoiding two trips to TC in as many weeks.
Camp Life – Savaii
The spotlight this week was on Cochran, who vowed to exceed everyone’s rather diminutive, undernourished nerdy fanboy image of him. Ozzy chats with Keith about keeping both him and Jim around if they can prove their worth in challenges. And sure enough, the next morning, there Cochran is, gathering and hacking away at coconuts with a machete (mother would never approve). Not long after, Ozzy takes a page out of Boston Rob’s book and finds the HII in fairly short order in the branches of a tree. I’m impressed. He appears to have learned from past mistakes, and vows in interview to keep his discovery a secret, lest his tribe-mates decide to flush the HII out.
Short on food, the three young men take a sojourn out into deeper water to do some spear-fishing. Poker player Jim reveals that he has already started to think ahead, forging a strong core alliance with Ozzy and Keith, with young ladies Elyse and Whitney along for the ride to keep the numbers on their side. What Jim doesn’t realize is that Ozzy and Keith are already allied, but Keith is content to let Jim think he’s pulling the strings for now. Hmm. He’s smarter than he looks. Confident in his alliance, Jim seems dead certain that the next three to go from Savaii will be Cochran, Dawn and Papa Bear. However, since Savaii was able to win Immunity, that discussion will have to wait for a future episode.
Camp Life – Upolu
Coach’s outlook has brightened considerably since the time he first hit the beach, secure in his alliance with Edna, Sophie, Brandon, Albert and Rick. Edna and Coach seem to bond, and both interview that allying with each other would seem to be mutually beneficial, Coach for his strength and Edna for her loyalty. Coach determines that the shakiest member of his alliance is Brandon, so he decides to take the youngster under his wing, so to speak. Brandon seems to admire Coach and his devotion to honor; in fact, he admires him so much that, during a walk, he reveals his identity as Evil Russell’s nephew to him. Wow, that didn’t take long.
After Coach picks his jaw off the ground, he recounts how Russell played on his honor and then discarded him when he no longer served his interests. Brandon promises Coach that he won’t do him wrong like Russell did, but it’s obvious that Coach’s hackles just went way up. He promises to give Brandon the benefit of the doubt… for now. They even exchange a short prayer, which was nice.
Brandon interviews again his opinion about Mikayla, revealing in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t like her, comparing her to Parvati. He particularly doesn’t like the way she tries to use her womanly wiles to influence others, which is strange, because Mikayla’s point of view seems to be that she’s the Amazon, the strong woman, the one who plays full-contact football and can hang with the men. Whatever the vibe is, he vows that he will personally orchestrate her departure from the game.
Several members of Upolu continue to believe that Christine already has the HII, but that’s clearly not the case, as she continues to search. And what she finds, hidden in the base of a tree, is the first clue that Jeff mentioned at the previous TC. The clue seems to indicate pretty definitively that the HII is hidden in a tree and will take some climbing to find. She’s going to need it, given that she’s spent all her time looking for the HII so far and not one minute forging alliances.
After losing the challenge, Coach proposes that given that they don’t know if anyone has found the HII, his five-strong alliance gives three votes each to Christine and Stacey. Brandon outlines his discomfort of Mikayla’s Jezebel-ness to Coach, who reasons that despite Brandon’s uneasiness, she’s easily the strongest woman on the tribe, much more so than either Christine or Stacey, and thus may be the better choice to keep around for now. Coach then discerns that Brandon’s feelings may stem from prior indiscretions in the youth’s life. Interesting, hadn’t thought of that. Brandon then goes to Sophie and Rick, and Sophie wonders just what Brandon’s deal is. Sophie even thinks that Mikayla would probably side with them against Christina if they asked her.
After that, it gets really awkward, as both Christina and Mikayla crashes the larger group’s discussions, and Edna proves to be a piss-poor liar when Christine asks who they were talking about. Christine figures that it will be the weakest that will go first, and that is clearly Edna, though now she wonders if it’s her head on the chopping block. Then Brandon goes to Christine and proposes Mikayla, causes even more puzzled looks. Hell, at the point, all I can say is that all the men appear to be safe, and none of the women (save perhaps Sophie) are. Christina makes another last-ditch effort to find the HII, but whether she finds it, we are not shown.
Meanwhile, Coach continues to have it out with Brandon, who is adamant about voting Mikayla, who he seems convinced already has her hooks into every man in camp. (There’s the Hantz paranoia.) Coach seems confident, Brandon or no Brandon, that TC will swing the way he wants.
Tribal Council
Since this is Upolu’s first trip to TC, Jeff asks Coach about his tribe’s first impression of him, and he replies that he thought he was initially perceived as a villain, but now he’s all about tribal strength. He then takes the conversation in a completely different direction, blurting out that he “heard” that Stacey and Christina had targeted Mikayla. Oh boy. Both ladies deny it, of course. Coach goes on to say that he would prefer to keep Mikayla around because she’s stronger. Mikayla admits that this is all news to her, and it seems clear that Coach just threw this out to test Brandon’s veracity. What it also did was call into question Coach’s loyalty, Stacey points out, a test that he just failed. Christine and Stacey dig at Coach to reveal who it was who told them that untruth, but Brandon’s name is not mentioned. Albert chimes in that by not revealing Brandon’s name, that’s actually a prime example of his loyalty.
Jeff then asks if anyone searched for the HII, and Coach quickly volunteers that Christine was seen looking for it several times. Christine takes umbrage at being singled out again, spitting out that Coach is obviously threatened by her, and Coach retorts that he, in fact, is. Jeff points out that Christine dissed Coach in the first two minutes of the game, and Christine repeats what she said then, that Coach’s presence in the game is “temporary”. Coach just smiles. I really, really don’t like Christine. She’s not a nice person, she’s not a good player, and I’ll be glad when she’s gone. I swear to God, she rolled her eyes no fewer than seven times during TC.
Then the unexpected happens: Jeff asks Mikayla to confront Christine and Stacey whether they really were plotting against her or not, and they vehemently deny it. Painted into a corner, Brandon comes clean and says that he wants Mikayla out because he icks her out. Jeff concludes the Q&A by telling Mikayla, “Welcome to Survivor. Word.
Voting time: One by one they vote, and not one of them is previewed. Jeff collects the urn, and out come the slips. Sophie. (Huh?) Edna. (WTF?) Christine. Stacey. Wow, I can’t remember the last TC where four different names were written down! Christine. Stacey. Christine. Stacey. And the final vote goes to… Christine. Yay. I am actually happy. Now she can go roll her eyes all the way to RedIsle.
Next week: It’s Semhar vs. Christine in the season’s first duel. And both halves of Brandon’s psyche continue to battle each other.
