Australian Survivor FINALE Recap: End of Days
So it’s come to this. After fifty-five days of lies, treachery, backstabbing and increasingly vivid hallucinations, we have reached the final of Australian Survivor, and we will find out which of the final three competitors in whose fate we are mildly invested will claim the title of “Sole Survivor”. Or possibly “Soul Survivor”? They’re never clear which it is.
The final three, of course, is El, Lee and Kristie: the latter having chosen to vote against Flick at the previous tribal council on the basis that, hey, being a moron has got me this far, let’s really push it all the way.
The trio walk to their final immunity challenge along a path marked with poles bearing the names of their fallen comrades, all of whom have been killed and eaten by the television crew. It’s a great time for reliving great memories. Remember Andrew and what a massive arsehole he was? Remember Des, and what a massive arsehole he was? Remember Phoebe and how we wanted to have sex with her? Remember Barry? Nah, me either.
Lee, El and Kristie wander past the poles, with each one struggling more and more to find something interesting to say about the person. Relatively early they resort to “Craig…what a character”, and by the time they get to Sam, all Lee can muster is, “Ah, Sammy boy…” and leaves it at that.
Kristie is smart enough to know the odds are against her, even if she can’t quite manage to know anything else, but as she says, “My dream has always been to take out the title of sole survivor”. Dunno if that dream developed as a result of the show existing, or whether the words “sole survivor” just floated into her head as a little girl and she’s been trying to figure out what they mean ever since.
Arriving at the cliffs for the challenge, The Other reveals that their loved ones are here to “cheer them on”, something that doesn’t usually happen on Survivor, because it adds nothing and is kind of annoying. The Other says they’re here to give them “extra motivation”, because having lived without plumbing or electricity or mattresses for two months in order to win half a million dollars, their ability to get psyched for it is really in question.
There’s all sorts of tears and hugs and I am sure it is really really wonderful for the final three, but let’s be honest: nobody else cares. Watching someone hug her dad just isn’t great TV. I mean if they were soldiers coming back to Iraq and hugging their dogs, that’d be moving, but this is just game show contestants pretending to have interesting backstories.
Kristie tells the story of how when she was eight she told her dad she’d be on Survivor one day, and her dad backs this up. “It’s been her driving passion,” he adds, which is slightly depressing when you think about it. I mean for most of the intervening years there wasn’t even a show for her to go on, so the fact that the desire to go on it was consuming her all that time…well. Kristie’s dad also says he always told her to be herself, so I guess it’s his fault.
The immunity challenge is all about endurance, or in other words, it’s all about helping Lee win. The trio must stand on poles and put their hands on another pole and not take their hand off it or lift a foot off its pole. This is also taking place atop a cliff, with the wind blowing and waves crashing around and sometimes over them.
“It looks simple,” says The Other, which is a stupid thing to say. It doesn’t look simple at all, it looks insanely hard. It’d be hard even if he wasn’t talking all the time: as it is, his commentary adds a degree of difficulty that seems calculated to make the castaways throw themselves off the cliff, never mind letting go of the pole.
The poles they have to stand on are quite thin, and at different heights, so they’re awkward and painful to stand on. They trio shift around, desperately trying to find comfort, the ocean spray washes over them, but they do not give in: they keep hanging in there, for three hours and counting.
As the challenge continues, as gripping and tense as reality TV gets, The Other LaPaglia decides it’s a good time to dissipate the tension and ruin the spectacle by having conversations with the contestants’ relatives, asking incredibly insightful questions like, “Why is Lee doing this?” and “Does this surprise you?” The answers he gets are both tedious and devoid of meaningful information and show that when it comes to reality TV, Australia yields to nobody in its ability to make a format worse.
Thankfully he finally stops jabbering with the annoying families, and we keep seeing the quite incredible sight of these three people simply refusing to budge. SIX HOURS they’ve been there, standing on their little sticks and keeping their hands glued to the pole. The tide is rising and the spray is drenching them more regularly and more thoroughly. El begins to howl in anguish, and then…
She slips…
El is gone. And probably crippled by the experience. The Other helps her over to her sister, who is no doubt deeply disappointed in El’s public failure and shaming of the family.
Absurdly, Lee and Kristie keep going. Lee’s superb physical fitness is his trump card, but Kristie’s ability to mentally transport herself to a disturbing fantasy world is hers. It’s a battle of wills. Sort of.
Kristie is starting to crack, as she starts to sob and beg Lee to let her win the challenge. She promises to take him to the final two, but pleads that he give her this. She says the reason she’ll take him to the final two is because he reminds her of her dad — I’m not sure that insulting Lee is the way to get what you want, Kristie. Lee’s not buying it, anyway — he’s got a good thing going with El and he isn’t going to not only risk the prizemoney, but his future sex life, on the crazy crying lady.
Lee is near to tears himself — it’d make anyone cry to have to listen to Kristie. And then, suddenly, he slips…
Lee falls! A second later, Kristie falls, on Lee. Insult to injury and all that. But Kristie has somehow won the immunity challenge and we have to listen to her demented babbling as her dad carries her off and lays her down and rubs her legs and encourages her self-obsessed blather.
The Other congratulates Kristie on her victory, and El and Lee and their families smile tightly through their hatred.
And so to tribal council. The decision, of course, is Kristie’s: will she take Lee or El to the final two? She did promise Lee she’d take him, but Lee, as far as I can tell, didn’t let her win, he just stuffed up, so the promise is void. And Kristie probably stands a better chance of beating El, so she must balance that against the fact that she’s an idiot and will probably make the wrong decision.
The jury comes in and collectively buries its head in its hands upon seeing Krisite wearing the immunity necklace, as Kristie winning anything is not only unexpected, but deeply offensive to decent people.
The Other asks Lee and El to plead their cases. El bullshits about how she’s not a bullshitter, and Lee doesn’t even bother to try to convince her.
Kristie, naturally, votes out El, because she’s not too bright. So it’s Kristie versus Lee for the half a million, and Kristie’s only real chance is that enough of the jury think voting for her as a joke is a good idea that she squeaks home.
The result of the immunity challenge means that Lee has to face something more gruelling than anything he’s encountered before: a full day in camp with nobody but Kristie to talk to.
For her part, Kristie bounces around the camp squawking and hooting like the delusional twit she is. The most painful thing about her victory is that it has boosted her ego, and Kristie is more the sort of person whose ego you want to break down and rebuild from scratch. Kristie feeling like a high achiever is a terrible, terrible thing to witness.
Lee notes that Kristie and he are very different people — which is true — and that she is more focused on strategy — which is not. Kristie’s strategy is basically to wander aimlessly up and down the beach for two months and agree to whatever the last person she spoke to tells her to do.
Now to the good part: the jury confrontations.
Lee makes his opening statement, focusing on how honest and decent and manly and wonderful he is. It’s short and sweet, amounting to basically, “I’m a good dude and I’m better than everyone else.”
Kristie starts her statement with “All of you, you thought I was absolutely crazy”, which is a fair description of everyone’s correct opinion of her. “I’ve had to do lots of things,” she goes on, which is a bit of an exaggeration. Her statement then just turns into an extended boast about how brilliant she’s been to screw everyone else over and how much they all must suck because she’s there and they’re not. “I’ve made my way through two whole tribes. Who in Survivor can say that? I CAN!” she snarls, apparently trusting to the jury’s love of people who they hate to see her through.
Then the questions. El asks Kristie how she played the game, given that she never saw her do anything whatsoever. Kristie claims she “ate away” at everyone in Vavau, whatever the hell that means. She also makes a pretty good point in noting that everyone else was pretty goddamn stupid to not vote her out.
El has a quiet chuckle at what a numbnuts Kristie is, and takes her seat.
Flick steps up to ask her question. She tells Kristie she never even played the game and asks why she deserves to win. “It depends how you define playing the game,” replies Kristie, stupidly. Apparently Kristie defines “playing the game” as “basically doing nothing”. Everyone on the jury has a little giggle at Kristie being a dick.
Flick doesn’t ask Lee anything, or maybe they edited that out because it was boring.
Next, Brooke asks Lee if he’s led El on about their relationship. Lee says there is no romantic relationship, which is quite a big lie I think we’ll all agree.
Then Brooke moves on to Kristie, noting that she let her “daddy Lee” make all her moves for her. Which is true, but Kristie denies it, claiming that her “gameplay” was to “let everyone think they had control of me”. “I was kind of using Lee as well!” she squeaks excitedly, seemingly genuinely thinking this garbage is helping her cause.
Jennah-Louise steps up — remember Jennah-Louise? She was on this show. She tells Lee that she doesn’t like ignorance or arrogance, and that these are the traits that he exudes, for assuming everyone else on the show — particularly her — was selfish and money-grubbing. She basically tears him a new stump-hole for being an up-himself, self-righteous twat, and challenges him to prove he’s not one.
Lee, who must be pretty tempted to tell Jennah-Louise to go fuck herself, apologises to her, which is either pretty classy or pretty clever. And Jennah-Louise doesn’t ask Kristie anything, though again, maybe it’s just editing.
Next is Kylie, who talks some real crap about “what the title we’ll be voting for represents” and doesn’t ask any questions and what was even the point, Kylie.
Here is Sam, to tell Lee he takes advantage of people who are vulnerable, and asks whether he’s done this to Kristie, seeing as she’s basically a child. Lee says he didn’t force her to do anything. “She probably played me as much as I played her,” he says, knowing this is not true.
Here is Nick, who has a lot to say. He tells Kristie he knows very little about her, but then that’s all there is to know. He tells her her speech is as incoherent as her gameplay, but tonight she’s come out “balls to the wall”. And he kind of…leaves it at that. I don’t know what his point is.
Nick moves on to Lee and says how much he enjoyed going into the bush with Lee, but makes sure to make the “No Homo” addendum to this. He also accuses Lee of retreating to the moral high ground — a “magical place where nobody voted for each other and people who came to play the game were forever shamed.” He kind of has a point here, but then again, Nick is a real shithead himself. He finishes by demanding an explanation from “Lieutenant Lee of the Morality Police”. Lee replies in a humble and self-effacing manner and admirably avoids calling Nick a fuckstick.
Sue is next. She calls Kristie sweetheart but also says she did her head in with her flip-flopping. Kristie, who now has an utterly deranged look in her eyes, as if she is going to bite Sue’s face off, says yep, flip-flopping was exactly what she had to do and she enjoyed screwing everyone over immensely.
Matt tells Kristie that he saw a nice Kristie who he liked, and a manic Kristie who he didn’t like, and asks her which Kristie he’d be voting for. Kristie talks about panic attacks and beating the odds and doesn’t answer his question at all, but Matt says “good answer” because he really wants Kristie to stop talking.
And so, decision time. Who will win: the self-righteous git who thinks he’s better than you, or the creepy weirdo who has made up a baffling story about what happened in the game that bears no resemblance to reality?
Hard to care, isn’t it?
Time to vote. After 55 days on the island, and 54 days spent in this final tribal council, it all comes down to this.
Obviously we don’t see most of the jury’s votes, but we do see El vote for Lee because she can’t wait to get up on that D. And we see Kylie vote for Kristie because she sucks. Otherwise: a mystery.
Votes cast, naturally now The Other has to pad it out a bit further by droning on in his unpleasant monotone, and then pad it MORE by bringing in more family members. Mothers and kids and fathers and brothers and stepmothers and nobody cares about any of them and The Other insists on talking to THEM as well, JFC.
FINALLY, The Other reads the votes. Kylie’s vote for Kristie first, then El’s for Big Boy Lee. Then another for Kristie. Then ANOTHER for Kristie — what the fuck is wrong with these people? Then…ANOTHER for Kristie?
Oh fucking hell, Kristie wins. The jury is a bunch of morons. This show sucks. Go to hell, Kristie. Everyone who voted for her is a dick.
I hate the world.
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