The latest episode of Survivor was all about coming back from the dead. No, the survivors were not attacked by Captain Barbossa’s terrifying army of ghost pirates (though a cameo by Jack Sparrow would sure spice things up). The resurrections were of a symbolic sort. Mostly. I’m still not sure if Sanele was breathing by the end of it.
Unfortunately, I missed the first couple of minutes due to unforeseen technical difficulties. When I started watching, Mzi was making some new hooks and Nico was talking about someone called ‘Sanzele’ who has a shoulder injury.
What a coincidence! One of his tribe members is called Sanele and he also has a shoulder injury. Maybe he and this Sanzele fellow can get together and discuss idiots in their tribe who can’t get people’s names right.
Nico was in A Mood because of his cigarettes having gone missing.
Waitaminute. Cigarettes?
Now I understand that he smuggled them in and they weren’t one of the many, many undeserved luxuries this show has been piling onto the contestants but how did no-one notice and penalise him?
I mean, Richard Hatch smuggled in matches (insert ‘flaming’ joke here) by sticking them up his bum (don’t worry, the prison authorities are very thorough in their strip searches) but the producers caught him and made sure they were taken away. Wouldn’t our producers have noticed if Nico had suddenly produced matches or a lighter when trying to get the fire going?
Or did Nico have to wait until his tribe won fire before he could smoke? Did he have to ask to take the flint with him when he needed to go to the woods to do his business and when questioned gives some excuse about starting a fire to help with the smell?
Questions, questions. Anyway, Nicotine was in a very bad mood due to lack of ciggies and spent some time bitching and moaning about Brigitte. “The catwalk is that way,” he said disparagingly.
While I’m not much of a fan of Brigitte myself, I found myself wondering just what his objection to her is. Is it because she’s a model? Is it because she has a fat ass? Honestly, if you’re going to hate Brigitte, than at least pick one of the many legitimate things to hate her about.
Nicotine then ragged on Brigitte for having betrayed Sam. Huh? She was the only one who didn’t vote for him. Is integrating with the tribe and not weeping for him for fifty days and nights after his elimination really that much of a betrayal of Sam? That just means she has a sense of self-preservation, something the perpetually bitchy and grumpy Nicotine seems to lack.
Brigitte revealed that she was the one who had hidden Nicotine’s cigarettes and caused him to become ever more of a jerk than usual. After all, the more of a jackass Nicotine makes of himself, the greater chance he has of getting eliminated instead of her. Hee. If she continues in this vein, I might just start liking her.
The Reward Challenge featured a numbers puzzle I remember from last week’s Survivor Africa in which Yaga solved it in under a minute. The South African lot took many minute-long tries to do it which just shows how much Yaga owns their maths-challenged asses.
The reward itself was some product-placed Nando’s.
Wow. Sometimes my powers of prediction amaze even myself. It’s not like the US Survivor doesn’t indulge in its share of product placement (Doritos and Mountain Dew, anyone?) but they do tend to hold back from having a giant advertising billboard behind the winners as they eat.
Just so you know the damn product placement worked. I had a mega craving for flamegrilled chicken after watching the show. Damn chicken-peddling bastards.
Similar to last week, the self-proclaimed Brains once again lost the thinking challenge. Rama’s latest referendum on the reasons for their challenge suckiness led to everybody except Zayn and Lezel whining about not having the killer instinct.
“We’ve lost seven out of nine challenges,” they lamented, conveniently forgetting the fact that it’s not the win-to-loss ratio that counts but how many times they avoid TC. As of that whinefest they were level with Aguilera in the number of TCs attended. Not that they don’t suck, they just don’t suck nearly as bad as they think they do
Why is it then that Zayn (and Lezel to a lesser extent) seemed to be the only one who grasped that the point of the game is not to win Nando’s but to stay on the island? Of course you can’t be complacent but save your *bleep!* for the Immunity Challenges because that’s where it really matters.
To make matters worse, Rama was under attack from some killer mutant crabs. They were purple and green and evil and made me wonder just what chemicals the American corporations have been dumping into Panamanian waters. Or perhaps they were just normal crustaceans who had been trained by Mzi as attack crabs.
Over at Aguilera, Sanele’s arm was still giving him mega-issues. Since the season’s pirate-themed, I suggest he chop it off and invest in a hook. But no, Mark speedboated over with a Very Serious Look on his face and told the Aguilerans that he was taking Sanele away for some medical attention.
Medical attention? Bah. When
Whatsisface Jeff from Palau buggered up his ankle, did he go for some medical attention? No, he limped on until he could be voted out at TC. When
Guatemala Amy stuffed up her foot something fierce, did the medical experts come around and take her away in their boat? Nope, she had to use that foot for days and days
until she was voted out (and I doubt she would have let them take her anyway).
Unless Sanele’s arm was in danger of falling off, I just don’t see why he had to be taken out of the game in such a dramatic fashion. Injuries and sickness happen in Survivor; they add yet another dynamic to an already complex game.
Does a tribe decide to vote a strong member out based on their injury or do they risk it all and bank on that tribemember recovering in the near future or performing well despite their injury? It’s a gamble that I like to see the castaways make.
Yes, if the injury is legitimately serious like Mike’s fall into the fire, then get the survivors some proper medical attention. But Sanele’s evacuation looked to me like yet another example of our South African Survivor mollycoddling the contestants at every turn.
The IC involved the contestants being buried alive. I believe a “Muahahahaha!” is required when talking about people being buried alive. Though, I’m not quite sure what being buried alive had to do with either Panama or pirates. Perhaps the challenge was based on the notorious zombie pirates who have been known to wander around Panama?
Three of each team would be buried in a claustrophobic chamber underground and one tribemember would have to dig them out. With Sanele out, Aguilera chose Mzi to dig while Rama brilliantly chose Lezel. Lezel? That girl’s so skinny, I’m not sure she wouldn’t sink if she knelt in the sand.
Without a committee around her to come to a consensus about where to dig, Lezel could not figure out the right spot. Funny, you think a lawyer of all people would be good at digging up dirt.
Aguilera was so obviously going to win the challenge that I was free to get horribly distracted by how awful the music was. I suppose the generic horror movie music sorta fit the ‘buried alive’ theme but when the random ticking came on, I started wondering if they were counting down the minutes until Gareth, Jacinda and Danielle died from asphyxiation. The time it was taking Lezel to dig, the Ramans running out of air was a distinct possibility.
Several years after Aguilera won, Rama finally emerged from the chamber and clambered over the structure they had to cross to get out of there. The pre-ad suspense came in whether Lezel would further embarrass herself and fall like an idiot to her death. As you can imagine, the answer was no.
Back at Loser Island, Jacinda told us how gatvol she was of losing. Hey, chairperson? Since you’re their great and fearless leader and all, you wanna do something about that? Meanwhile, the menfolk worried about the status in the women-dominated tribe.
I must say, I got a bit distracted at this point because I decided to try the subtitles option so I wouldn’t miss any of the strategising and found them to be the worst thing ever. The subtitles don’t catch half the stuff that’s said and I pity anyone who needs them to know what’s going on.
At TC, Mark basically asked Rama why they continued to suck though he phrased it a lot better than that. Our Fearless Leader Jacinda, who had so effusively praised her leadership abilities last week, made it quite firmly know that she was not leading the tribe.
Good Lord, she was ready to crown herself queen of all and sundry last week but this week she’s suddenly not the leader anymore? She’s more than willing to take credit for all the good stuff that happens at Rama but the minute something goes wrong, it’s not her doing. Talk about passing the buck.
This woman lies and manipulates with ease, has a curious detachment to the people around her, takes all the responsibility for the good and none for the bad, has herself minions and yesmen under her protection, and never gets called to task no matter how ineffective her leadership is.
She’s not just a Survivor player, she’s a politician-in-training. How long after Survivor ends until she starts her own party?
Surprisingly, despite the most embarrassing challenge performance I’ve yet seen, Lezel was not in danger. It was Zayn and Danielle who were on the chipping block. Just when I thought Zayn was outta there, what should happen but Danielle gets more votes.
Hooray! Maybe the Jacinda clique isn’t as tight as it looked at first. But just as I was celebrating Danielle’s surprising demise, there was a twist.
Mark explained that Sanele had been taken out of the game for medical reasons just as the man himself shuffled slowly onto the scene with dead, empty eyes. I can only assume the medical reasons were that he had died because he had clearly become a zombie. Luckily the Ranans were safe from a zombie rampage because as we know zombies only like to eat brains.
Zombie Sanele listened to his master’s voice as it told him to hand over his torch and buff to Danielle. She was to go to Aguilera and take Sanele’s place. Just like Zombie Sanele, she had come back from the dead, although in her case it was only metaphorical.
Talk about a twist coming a week too late. Why couldn’t this have happened last week when Ncumisa was voted out instead of saving an annoying thing like Danielle?
Sanele’s last words must have been taped before he died because he had a little more life to him, not that he was the most effervescent chap when he was alive. He said something about something. His exit was as anticlimactic as his entire run on the show.