Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: There was lots of fun and strong aspects in this week of Australian Survivor, but it was bogged down by a truly stupid, unnecessary twist. Thankfully, once again, the good outweighed the bad, and all in all, it was another fun week in the Australian Outback.
Episode 19
Andrew feels betrayed by Hayley after she flipped to vote out Emmett, aligning her fate with George and Cara. He, Dani, and Flick now find themselves on the bottom. But with all the flip-flopping so far, you can’t guarantee anything.
Reward Challenge
The tribe divides into two teams of three, leaving one odd player out. That player gets to pick a team to back. If that team wins, they get to participate in the reward with them. The teams remove three poles from a high frame. They use the poles to cross a balance beam, retrieve sand bags, and cross a mud pit. In the final stage, they attach a basket to each of the poles. To win, they have to land one sand bag in each basket. They’re playing for a reward of an Italian feast.
Green: Andrew, Hayley, George
White: Dani, Flick, Wai
Cara sits out, and chooses the White team, who does end up winning.
Reward
This is about a perfect situation for Dani and Flick, going on reward with George’s two closest allies. It’s still a tall task, but it’s still invaluable to have time with them away from George. And luckily, Dani and Flick only need one person to regain the majority advantage. They have to try something, but Cara is probably a lost cause here. But Wai? She’s shown time and again that she will switch allegiances at the drop of a hat, so she remains their best bet.
Fire Tribe
Hayley, Cara, and George discuss their voting plans, and they all agree on Andrew. Wai, however, prefers Flick. She even says, “I know it makes less sense strategically, but I’m still more protective of Andrew.” Yikes. Nothing wrong at all with having a different preference, but you’ve got to come up with better reasoning than that. I can appreciate her wanting to be honest, but that won’t exactly instill confidence and trust with your alliance members.
Immunity Challenge
The players stand on two wooden planks, kept up by holding onto a handle above their head. Let go of the handle, the planks fall and you’re in the water and out of the challenge. Hayley outlasts Andrew to win her second consecutive immunity challenge.
Pre-Tribal
Hoping to sway Wai towards voting Andrew, George tells Wai that she is Andrew’s next target. Wai isn’t so sure she believes him, which is fair, considering how much George has lied so far already. But we don’t see Wai speaking to the other side to get their plans. She can probably safely assume they’re targeting George, but if she were going to flip, she would need to know for sure who their target would be.
Tribal Council
Great, another stupid twist. JLP explains the Save Scroll. There are four urns present at Tribal Council. Three are empty, while one contains the Scroll. Whoever is voted out gets to pick an urn to smash. Choose the right one and you’re back in the game. Choose wrong, and you’re out. This is so frustrating. Last minute twists that mess with the vote need to go. It completely constricts gameplay and strategy. It also discourages making big moves. An idol is an idol. You can at least attempt to plan around that. You can’t plan around blind luck.
The player voted out also doesn’t have to do anything to save themselves. There’s no move or decision, like whether or not to play an idol or advantage. Even with the Redemption Rock twist, at least Hayley and Baden had to win a challenge to get back in.
JLP also doesn’t explain the full function of these stupid urns. Are there four urns every time? If someone picks an empty urn, are there only three urns next time, two, then one? Either way it sucks. If it goes down one by one, what about if the first three players pick an empty urn? You don’t even need to have Tribal Council; safety would be guaranteed. If it resets at four each time, for how many votes are the urns in play? At least we’ll get some clarity at the next Tribal Council. If there are three, we know how it works. If there are four, hopefully we’ll get more details.
I’m going to be bold and assume production at least explained to the players all the details of the urns, but why not tell the audience? It makes it harder to follow the show if you don’t know all the rules and potential outcomes of these twists.
The votes go 4-2-1 for Andrew, George, and Flick. Andrew chooses an empty urn, and his time in the game officially comes to an end. There has been so much to like and love about this season, but I’m worried its lasting legacy is going to be production indulging every little creative whim and stuffing the game full of (mostly bad) twists.
Episode 20
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Dani is trying to form a plan to vote out George. She wants to move ahead with Flick, Hayley, and Wai. One way or another, George or Cara has to be taken out soon. A strong twosome only gets stronger as the numbers continue to dwindle. Cara has talked about voting out George, but I don’t know that she would be able to pull the trigger. At this point, my money would be on them sticking together to the end, if given the opportunity.
Immunity Challenge
For this challenge, they race through the water to a pontoon, up a ladder, over net, and across the water to another pontoon, and then crossing a rope bridge, collecting balls along the way. At the end, they must land two balls in a net to win the challenge. Wai decides to sit out the challenge. George gets to the top of the ladder, before deciding to give up as well, believing he couldn’t jump far enough to collect the ball for that stage. After a tight battle at the end with all four, Dani pulls out her first immunity win.
Pre-Tribal
George wants Flick out, not to be swayed by the urns. He does confirm that only three urns will be at Tribal Council. I hope whoever gets the votes picks the right urn. If it gets down to two urns, or God forbid one, it’s going to be so uninteresting. Plus, it will free up the players to get back to actually playing the game. Again, the urns actively discourage big and creative gameplay. It’s a known, inherent risk. Why take the chance of trying to put together a major move with that in play?
Oh, what do we have here? Hayley literally says in a confessional she’s playing it safe because of the urns. If Flick were to be voted out and come back, that brings a significant challenge threat back into the game. But if the same were to happen to George, he would come back, out for blood. By all accounts, Flick would be easier to handle as a returning player.
Down but not out, Dani and Flick get to work on trying to flip the vote to George. Wai seems willing to consider it, but needs to know Hayley is 100% on board before committing. George has a further concern that Cara is going to waste her idol. The last chance to play it is at the Final 5.
Tribal Council
A lot of nothing gets said leading up the vote. No need to go over the specifics here. At the vote, Cara plays her idol for herself…for some reason. She receives zero votes. Hayley and Wai stick with George and Cara in voting for Flick. BUT. Flick finds the Save Scroll. So all of that for, what? Nothing? This episode was 99% pointless, with Cara’s wasted idol literally the only thing of consequence to happen. Well, I guess here’s hoping this is the last non-elimination episode of the season, and hopefully the last twist we’ll have to suffer through. At least let the end game play out as purely as possible.
Episode 21
With Flick back in the game, we basically reset from the previous episode, further proving how pointless that episode ending up being. At least Cara’s idol was played, putting it back in the game. But unfortunately the editing team even muddied the waters here. In the preview for this episode, they showed Flick finding it.
George is (rightfully) worried about the idol for a couple reasons. One, Cara played it unnecessarily. Now they don’t have it at perhaps the most critical point in the game. And Cara and George had kept the idol a secret from Hayley and Wai. He’s worried this could create some distrust within the alliance. Cara playing the idol also indicated she thought there was a good chance Hayley and Wai flipped. Not the idea you want to convey to your partners in the game.
Reward Challenge
The castaways race out into the water to collect a bag to bring back to shore. In the bag are sticks and rope, which they use to create a pole to retrieve a key (an absolute Survivor classic). Once they have their key, they unlock a box of sand bags, which they throw to land in a spinning goal. First land five wins a an overnight trip away from camp.
Hayley and Flick get a big head start on the final stage, apparently so much so that George just gives up trying to retrieve his key. It’s an interesting choice. As a viewer and fan of the show, I guess I don’t have a problem with it. But what kind of message does that send to everyone else? It won’t cause them to want to vote him off (not that they need any extra motivation anyway). But if they’re on the jury, are they going to want to vote for someone who just gives up like that?
Plus, you just never know what can happen in these challenges. And that point is punctuated when Dani completes a comeback victory. Dani of course picks Flick to join her on the reward. When JLP lets her pick one more, she chooses Hayley.
Reward
On the reward, there’s the standard fare strategy talk. Flick and Dani make good points about how Hayley can benefit from joining them and finally voting George and/or Cara. At breakfast the next morning, Hayley tells Dani and Flick she’s in. However, she still may need to convince Wai to full go ahead with the plan. I doubt she would switch from a majority alliance only to see a 3-3 tie vote. Plus, you know, she’s alone with them on a reward. Is she really going to say no?
Immunity Challenge
Tethered to a rope woven through a frame, they must unspool as much rope as they think they need to get themselves through an obstacle course to retrieve a key. Once they unlock themselves, they cross a balance beam, to release puzzle tiles from a hitching post. They then slide the puzzle pieces down a shuffleboard-like table and through a hole. Solve a word puzzle to win.
If there’s one thing we know about Survivor challenges, it’s that the puzzle is the great equalizer. And it proves no different here, as Wai completes a MASSIVE comeback to win immunity. I love this for the game. As much as I’m rooting for Hayley and don’t want to see her at risk, Wai being immune is the best case from a gameplay standpoint, at least in terms of being interesting and fun to watch. She was probably the safest person left in the six. There’s reason to vote off each of the remaining five players.
Pre-Tribal
Hayley and Wai spend the pre-Tribal time working both sides. They set up a split vote plan with both George & Cara and Dani & Flick. Both sides have been burned by Hayley before, so they all go idol hunting, hoping to find a some literal piece of mind. But once again, we already saw in the preview how this turns out, so they should have just shown Flick finding it straight away. The idol decision is a tough one for Flick. If she hangs onto it and doesn’t get voted out, she’s guaranteed herself a spot in the Final 4.
Tribal Council
Flick chooses to not player her idol. Hayley and Wai decide to stick with George and Cara, resulting in a 2-2-2 split between Dani, Flick, and Cara. Dani is voted out unanimously on the re-vote.
This leads us into the final three episodes next week. This recap is likely already too long (nothing new here), so I’ll be trying to get a separate preview out in the next day or two.
