Survivor NZ recap: Start making sense, damn it!
The third episode of Surivor NZ promised plenty of action.
Contains spoilers for Survivor NZ: Thailand, episode three
Look, we all know reality TV isn't actually real. The footage is judiciously pruned to craft narratives and amplify conflict.
But what's a poor producer to do when nothing the cast does makes sense? When there's no conflict to amplify, no schemes or plans, only a kind of ennui?
Here is my issue with Sunday night's episode: nothing the Chani tribe collectively did made any sense.
Khangkhaw tribe still hasn't had to vote a member off.
By the end of Sunday night's episode, they were still the only tribe to vote someone off. But there is no rhyme or reason to the way they're voting. First they voted off their strongest player, Jose, because she was too much of a threat. Then Karla, because she wasn't threatening enough.
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This week it was Franky's turn to have her torch dramatically extinguished. Her tribe-mates went for the "weakest link" again but as host Matt Chisholm pointed out, they're on a lake, with a bunch of swimming challenges dictating success, and Franky established herself early on as one of the game's strongest swimmers.
It was the last in a series of what appear to be totally nonsensical decisions from Chani tribe members this episode. Let me run you through them.
Adam proved a master of distraction in the reward challenge but was beaten by Dave.
First up, as has become the pattern on the show, we had a reward challenge. This was a fun one. The tribes went one-on-one in a kind of boxing ring where they had to balance a snake statuette on a big spool while trying to knock their opponents' snake off.
Finally - finally! - Chani won a challenge, and by quite a margin. Their prize was a pile of fishing gear, and they were stoked. As superfan JT quickly identified, however, it's a Survivor trope to hide an immunity idol in with a reward, and sure enough, back at camp, Eve found one nestled in a net.
She immediately shared this knowledge with her entire tribe - nonsensical decision number one. In fairness she didn't know it was an immunity idol clue at this stage, but once they'd collectively dug it up she realised she'd made a big mistake.
Chani won fishing gear in the reward challenge.
Now, the whole point of a hidden immunity idol is that you keep it secret and safe, and whip it out when you think your name's about to come up in tribal council to save yourself from being voted out.
As Chani now discovered, things get awkward when everyone knows about it. After some discussions, it was decided that Eve would hold onto it with the promise she'd use it only after the merge to keep herself or another Chani member safe.
The issues with this way of dealing with the immunity snafu were made clear when Eve departed for The Outpost. Did she take the idol, or leave it? What if she got swapped onto the other tribe? Was it hers, or did it really belong to Chani?
Eve and Kaysha had to balance a ball on their sticks for The Outpost.
This highlighted nonsensical decision number two. These idols grant individual immunity - they can't be owned by the tribe. There is no way that, if you give the idol to someone, they will not use it to save themselves if they need to.
Of course, Eve took the idol to the The Outpost, where she lost to Khangkhaw representative Kaysha at a ball-balancing challenge. As a reward, Kaysha got to feast on high-energy brownies, lemonade and other Thai delicacies while Eve looked on.
The producers' intention was clearly for them to form some kind of alliance ahead of the merge, but in the end they talked about - well, nothing, really.
Kaysha got to gorge herself on brownies and lemonade when she won at The Outpost.
The whole exercise proved more trouble than it was worth for Kaysha, because when she got back to camp and told her tribe-mates what had happened, nobody believed her. Maybe it was because the prize was so inconsequential next to last week's immunity idol clue that it seemed made-up; maybe it was just because they don't seem to like her. (Adam offered a lengthy theory about how there was no brownie or lemonade in her teeth.)
It's a bit of a shame Khangkhaw haven't lost any immunity challenges yet, because they're all practically gagging to get rid of Dylan - who knows it, and is frantically trying to find an immunity idol. The politics in this tribe are much more interesting than those over at Chani, but nobody's had to make a big move because they keep winning collective immunity.
The immunity challenge was an unmitigated disaster for Chani.
That trend continued at the next day's immunity challenge, where Chani went down to their heaviest defeat yet. The challenge itself involved diving beneath the lakes surface to collect wheels with letters around the edge, and then arranging them in the correct order to spell a word.
There were nine wheels in total, and by the time Khangkhaw had finished Chani only had two out of the water. Quite what went wrong is unclear, but it was a crushing defeat.
After their victory in the reward challenge Chani had been sure their losing streak was over, and hadn't really planned their voting at all. Cue some frantic negotiations back at camp. Renee, Franky and Dave wanted to vote off Eve because they felt the immunity idol made her too big a threat. They seemed to forget that having the immunity idol meant they couldn't vote her out. Nonsensical decision number three.
Eve, centre, played a masterful bluff by getting through Tribal Council without using her immunity idol.
Perhaps they just wanted to pressure her into using it - but wasn't the whole plan to use it to benefit all of them?
Either way, whatever plans they made went out the window when everyone realised Eve had the idol in her bag on the way to tribal. It turned out to be a bluff, however; she chose not to use it. The gamble paid off - Franky was gone, and Eve still has the idol for next week.
Another thing that doesn't make sense is that, despite all the talk of keeping Chani strong, nobody seemed to even consider voting off JT. He contributes very little to challenges, and nobody in the tribe trusts him. Why, then, do they keep him around? I like the guy but he's clearly a threat in the long game, and not much use in the early rounds when winning challenges is what matters.
Franky was eliminated on Sunday night's episode.
There are two possible reasons none of Chani's decisions add up. One is that they really just don't know what they're doing - not impossible. The other is that the show's editors haven't managed to accurately show us what's actually going on behind the scenes. It seems like all the real negotiations happen off-camera.
It's possibly a combination of both. All I know is that it makes for frustrating viewing.
- Survivor NZ: Thailand, Sundays 7pm, TVNZ 2
- Stuff
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