Australian Survivor Recap: The Gap of Rohan
Previously on Australian Survivor: three tribes became two!
I know, not that big a deal, is it?
Tonight on Australian Survivor, Craig is jonesing to look at his idol clue. He creeps into the jungle to read it. The note says the idol is on the shore on the east side, which presents a problem because Craig has no idea which way is east. Without Google maps, what chance does he have?
It’s Day 20, and Jennah Louise is worrying about her status in Saanapu, given that her best friend in the tribe is Nick, who hates her guts. “I can’t feel sorry for herself,” says Jennah Louise, but she’s giving it a red-hot go. She believes she has what it takes to turn the tables, but public opinion seems pretty divided on this.
Meanwhile at Vavau, Kristie is just trying to be a likeable person, which shouldn’t be too difficult because people will always be judging her in comparison to Phoebe, the walking talking personification of the concept of “low bar”.
As if to illustrate the point, Phoebe starts talking about how worried she is by the fact that Kat is smiling. Smiles are poison to Phoebe: they burn her like acid. She is pissed off that she hasn’t got control of the numbers anymore. She tries to manipulate her ally Rohan into using the immunity idol because if Rohan starts making friends it will kill her.
Back at Saanapu, Matt reads out a dumb poem about the upcoming reward challenge. The clue seems to suggest that the winners will get a bath or something, a pretty big deal when you are not only utterly filthy, but plagued by memories of past sins that you wish to scrub from your skin, like these people.
On arriving at the challenge, the tribes are confronted by the sight of a large pit of mud — their task will be to search in the mud for Richie and Alex from The Bachelor before they run out of oxygen.
Disappointingly, that’s just a joke: actually the task is to dive into the mud, cover their entire bodies, then have the mud scraped from them. The first tribe to fill its mud receptacle wins. The winner gets to go to a spa to eat cheese and brush their teeth.
The castaways hurl themselves into the mud with gusto, and the fact that this challenge is basically an excuse for them to all grope each other. There’s not that much to say in description: they all roll around in mud and then get felt up by their teammates. That’s about it. Lee proves an ability to balance mud on his forearms and head that his state cricket career had given little indication of, and all the women make sure to pack their cleavage as heavily as possible. Saanapu proves to have the greatest talent for getting dirty and fondling each other’s erogenous zones, and win reward. Vavau, as punishment, must now keep the mud on for the rest of their lives.
After the challenge, Kristie reveals her greatest secret: she was hoping to win. And then she didn’t. Ironic, isn’t it.
While Kristie bemoans the cruelty of poetic justice, Saanapu arrive at their spa. It’s not a proper spa like they get on American Survivor, it’s just a kind of makeshift bamboo patio on a beach. But there are showers and razors and toothbrushes and shampoo, so Saanapu members get to be slightly less disgusting for a bit. They also get champagne, which is especially good for the alcoholics in the tribe, who were suffering.
As they binge, Jennah Louise discusses her plan to “shake up” the Saanapu tribe, a plan which seems to mainly involve her sitting on the beach talking to the camera about her plan. She is extremely excited when Kylie tells her that she’d probably think an alliance would be sort of OK maybe I guess. Jennah Louise immediately begins scheming to develop deluded expectations about alliances with other people. The sun is shining bright in whatever world Jennah Louise exists in.
Meanwhile at Vavau, the tribe is turning the ocean brown with the mud they’re washing off themselves, and hopefully with nothing else. Also, Rohan is being an idiot. He tells Andrew and Conner all about his and Phoebe’s machinations and desire to get rid of Kat, with Kat in earshot. Andrew thinks Rohan’s gut-spilling is the stupidest move he’s ever seen, which is pretty rich from someone wearing that hat.
Meanwhile Craig has figured out the idol clue, but can only access the location at low tide. This makes it difficult to get away to look at it, and it’s already difficult to get away because he needs an excuse to leave camp, and “I’m going down the beach to find the idol” could give the game away. He comes up with the brilliant idea of suggesting the whole tribe go for a little exploring trip, which is a weird thing to suggest but is accepted by the rest of Vavau because they are delirious with hunger and thirst. Craig talks darkly of “getting everyone down the other end of the beach” in a tone strongly suggestive of a man planning a mass murder.
Back at Saanapu the tribe has returned from their spa day to find that it’s been raining and that against all the odds, the rain has caused things to get wet. They never saw this coming. It’s also been raining at Vavau, which has triggered similar depressive results in the tribespeople.
Both glum tribes head for the immunity challenge, knowing that their only hope of escaping the hell of island life is to throw the game. The immunity challenge is water basketball. Or water netball. Trying to get a ball into a basket while in the water, anyway. But also with tackling like rugby. So I don’t know what it is really. In the end what it ends up as is just a rolling wet wrestling match. The first round is two teams of women against each other and that’s pretty vicious, but when the men have a go it’s absolutely brutal — most of them seem to forget about the ball entirely and just try to kill each other.
Vavau scores in the girl round and Saanapu scores in the boy round, so it’s 1–1 going into the mixed round, which once again devolves into a hopelessly uncoordinated WWE encounter. Sam and Craig give up on movement and just stand at one end of the court hugging each other. Games are fun, but Sam and Craig have something purer: something more beautiful.
Kylie has about a million shots and finally gets one in. Saanpu 2–1. The first to something wins…I dunno, I missed that bit, I sort of zone out a bit when The Other LaPaglia is talking. I do hear him saying that Saanapu are on Kate “like white on rice”, which kind of confirms that zoning out is a good decision.
Despite the rice-like attentions of the blue defenders, Kate scores. 2–2. I think the next goal wins.
Yep, next goal wins. I caught that.
Lee and Rohan hug for a really long time. Rohan is either trying to have sex with Lee or trying to drown him. Then Rohan goes over to Sam and they give each other wedgies. Craig picks up Lee and throws him. But in the end it is Matt, blinding his enemies with the reflection of the sun off his startling white torso, who is the hero, nailing the final basket and condemning the yellowbellies of Vavau to a tense evening.
And condemning us to a dull evening, as we are subjected to the bane of every Survivor viewer’s existence: watching tribespeople talk to each other prior to tribal council. Basically Phoebe thinks she’s doomed but will have a crack at getting someone to change their vote. Meanwhile Rohan tells Sue and Conner about how much he hates Kat, while Kat stands about thirty centimetres away, because Rohan is, as Kat says, “not the sharpest tool in the shed”. But Andrew said that Rohan is not the sharpest pencil in the pencil box. Which is it? When will we stop this obfuscation?
Everyone blathers on about Phoebe and Rohan being a power couple and Rohan’s idol and whether Kat can be trusted to vote against them and they talk and they talk and they talk and it’s not remotely interesting. Get to the fucking point. Which I think is that the old Aganoans will vote for Sue in the hope that Rohan gives the idol to Phoebe and thus save Phoebe from the old Vavauans’ vote, but it won’t work because Kat hates Phoebe and Rohan. And Rohan might not give Phoebe the idol anyway maybe, although we’ve already established he’s an idiot, so maybe he will. Also, something completely different might happen.
So at tribal council there is MORE talking, and The Other asks his usual dull, unproductive questions. Everyone is very tense and Phoebe is depressed that she got mud in her hair. Andrew says that the former Aganoans need to get with the program. Phoebe complains that she doesn’t know what the program is. Andrew makes it pretty clear by his intonation that the program is called Fuck Off Phoebe, and he’s sick of Phoebe not getting with it. Then Rohan and Phoebe start whispering because Rohan has just figured out how the game works. Phoebe asks Kat if she’s on her side. Kat no doubt suppresses a giggling fit as she says, “Yes.”
After what seems about six thousand hours of babble, they vote. Phoebe votes for Sue. Rohan votes for Kat, apparently because he didn’t understand the plan. Andrew votes for Phoebe and says it’s “like shooting ducks in a barrel”. That’s not a saying, Andrew. You don’t shoot ducks in a barrel. You shoot fish in a barrel. You get your ducks all in a row, you don’t put them in a barrel. Andrew talks a lot about how dumb other people are, but he thinks you shoot ducks in a barrel.
Votes made, and Phoebe pulls out the immunity idol, which she got from Rohan. Most people voted for Phoebe, so it’s a good move for her. Not so good a move for Rohan, who is voted off with two votes because he was too dumb to vote for Sue like he was supposed to. But he voted for Kat, and Kat and Kristie both voted for Rohan, and the best-laid plans have gang agley and it’s pretty damn funny to see Phoebe all pissed off and Rohan just gormlessly goggling. I’m not sure he even knows which way to go after leaving the camp.
Tune in tomorrow when Phoebe accuses Kat of being malicious hahahahahaha.
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