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I must admit that Survivor's new 'Ethnic tribal lines' (funny how 'ethnic' sounds less... uncomfortable?) made me a little bit nervous: how would this play out?

 Would we have a nervous white guy calling everyone "Homey" and telling everyone how he has lots of Asian friends and that he pays his Mexican gardener quite a lot more than his neighbours do, and that he's almost positive he's legal?

 Would we have black women waving fingers in faces asking why they were the first ones asked to clean the camp dishes? Is it because that's all her people can do?

 Will the Latinos get up in arms when the Asians asked them why on earth they aren't better rowers, and surely they must be used to it?

 And will the Latinos in turn put it to the Asians that they left them in charge of the puzzle challenges for a reason?


Most of these questions were flying through my mind, although I was momentarily distracted by the opening of the show, which, as always, was fantastic. Beautiful islands, blue seas; that cool sailboat; and a bunch of very silly people trying to chase chickens around on an unstable ship deck (the chickens were kept on the 'poop deck', for obvious reasons).

• "Hey, that's my chicken, leave it alone!"
• "Why's it yours? Cos it's the biggest one? You think you better than us?"
• "Hey homies, just chill, aii?"
• "Man, who talks like that? Black folk don't talk like that. That's the dizzle wizzle, yo."
• "Oh, so you're stealing our chickens too now, is that right? Think only think Asians can do with Chickens is give them bird flu?"
• "How much time do we have until we have to get off-"
• *push*
• " Thanks Jeeeeeeeeeeeeff...."

And so my fears were dispelled by the realisation of the following simple fact: on Survivor, it doesn't matter what your skin colour is, or if you're a refugee, or if your family basically started the KKK. On Survivor there's only one rule:


If you're on it, you're an idiot.

That's basically it. All survivors are idiots. White idiots, black idiots, Asian idiots, Hispanic idiots. Equality via retardation.

Case in point: why bother to wait for the racially motivated feelings to come your way when you can do it yourself? Guess we're all just so used to it, eh?

Nice, Humanity, nice.

Anyway, there are four tribes, made up of blah blah blah you know how it goes. They all had to row to their own personal islands and all got a bunch of completely unmemorable tribe names. I'll be confused for weeks....

Everyone landed and was infused with as desire to 'represent' their 'people'. I could just imagine the pride that jazz musicians and photocopier salesmen the world over must have been feeling to know that they were being represented.

Seriously, who honestly thinks that they are representing anyone? At most, they're just embarrassing their people (if one could possibly embarrass a professional roller-girl at all). I hope that they get off of this trip soon.

As per usual, there were far too many survivors who seemed to think that they knew about surviving. There was Ozzy, who thought that he could help his team build a shelter:

• Ozzy: Ok, so I know what I'm doing right? So, we're going to build the shelter here, by this tree and that one... what's that? Oh, okay, I guess we shouldn't build it so close to that wasp nest. Ok, so we'll go from this tree to that - what, that's not a tree? A really tall lizard? Okay. Well, let me think a bit. Okay, first let me show you how to break bamboo.. *whack* Okay, usually it doesn't splinter quite like that. I'm sure the shards will be good for firelighting. Now, onto water purification: I have this technique that involves water, some rope, and a water purifier. Anyone got any of that here?

Not to be outdone, Sekou showed his tribe how to build fire by not making fire, but by rather believing in a future in which he would eventually make fire. Who would have thought that a sentence containing the words 'Fire' and 'Spirit' could yield so little actual burning? This man has a future in politics, I just know it.

The Asian Tribe had their own guru, and this one actually has quite a bit going for him: weird long beard, weird long hair, weird tattoos, and an ability to be weird regardless of the activity. Case in point: medical advice.

Cao Boi (pronounced 'Cao Boi') is very good at helping you with headaches. What he does is hurt you in so many other ways that you completely forget about your headache and focus on your now swollen and throbbing face. And what a lucky guess that he thinks that Brad had "A Bad Wind". Of course he did, all they've been eating is fruit!

The challenge was, as we've come to expect from Survivor now:

1) Awesome
2) Confusing

I was awesomely confused as I tried to figure out what the hell they had to do, but at least I could easily see who was winning (my guilty white conscience kept screaming "Please don't let the white tribe win! Pleeeeease!!"). Jeff's commentary by now is pretty much phoned in, he's so used to it.

• Jeff: Aaaaaaand. go! A tribe is off to a good start. Another tribe seems to be lagging. They'll have to do better than that. <yaaawn> Damn. Uh, Insert Tribe Name here is catching up. Dumb blonde guy/gal does something stupid involving his head a a hard surface. Oh, and The Tribe Everyone Thought Would be Useless Before The Game Even Began is going to Tribal Council! I need a drink.

Speaking of challenges and stereotypes: why, when they went to all those lengths to dispel the stereotypes they were afraid of, did each tribe just get all stereotypical on us? The Asian tribe worked hard and rocked at the puzzle. The Latino team were superb rowers. The black team were totally crap on the water. And the white team stole it from the black team. Disgusting really.

I award the Please Don't Breed Award this week to our favourite Orator, Sekou:





And the Make Lots of Babies Award goes to our favourite Cao Boi, Cao Boi (pronounced 'Cao Boi').


In closing: one wonders why there was a Native American tribe on this season. It would be a huge step in the right direction, firstly to ease the tensions and hurts of the past, and also because it would have been cool to make jokes about Cao Bois and Indians.

See ya next week.

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