We were reminded that Tandang and Kalabaw hadn’t lost during the first 13 days.
Matsing had yet to win and was down to Malcolm and Denise…but an idol can breathe new life.
<Malcolm showed us the idol and said it gave him a huge amount of power>At the reward challenge…Malcolm and Denise started new chapters in separate tribes.
In Tandang, Malcolm felt right at home, gaining Pete’s trust, putting Michael and RC further on the outs.
<RC heard saying she was going to fight.>
At Kalabaw, there were two alliances headed in opposite directions.
The men’s alliance had Penner’s idol and grew stronger when they recruited Denise.
While the women’s alliance was hit hard when Dana pulled herself from the game.
At the immunity challenge, Katie struggled, costing Kalabaw the victory.
Back at camp, in the face of diminishing numbers, strength was vital so Katie was an easy target.
When Dawson messed with the bull, she got the horns.
Katie was saved; Dawson kissed her chance at the million dollars goodbye.
(Isn’t Probst arrogant!)
Quite interesting that Probst didn’t personalize any of the remaining original members Kalabaw.
Recruiting Denise was a great move by Kent but he didn’t get credit by name: “They” recruited Denise.
Jonathan was only mentioned in connection to the idol, Carter was ignored.
The same could be said of Abi and Artis who didn’t matter in this confessional.
Note also that Peter didn’t recruit an ally, instead Malcolm gained Peter’s trust.
Jeff reduced the story to 4 players: Malcolm, Denise, RC and Mike. None of the others mattered here. We’ve already considered those 4 as long term players from their episode 1 showing. One more person should make a decisive move before too long to shape that end game story and that will be...
The Penner PunchKatie: “…I’m at the bottom of the totem pole now…I have to work my magic and see what happens.”
It could be said that Katie now embraces the theme of “fighting back” but too bad she has already been categorized as a bad player. Her story cannot change so drastically.
Kalabaw – Day 14
Katie’s first move was to plant the seed in Denise’s head that Penner had the idol. She figured she’d make the merge if she could get rid of Jonathan first.
When we hear players talk about the merge then we know it’s just around the corner. The boot for this episode was already set up during the last episode so what was the goal of this segment? Setting up the star of this episode and his role in future events. This episode was all about Penner, his brilliance, the need to blindside him, his reaction when put against the wall…
Tandang Day 15: Rice War
Peter: “We haven’t had a lot to eat especially since Mike depleted our ressources by eating it dry. He thinks it cooks in your body because it’s nearly 100 degrees so Mike makes terrible decisions. He’s the most useless player that’s ever been returned to Survivor and he needs to go home.”
Artis: “As a returning player, I don’t understand... We have no food because of Mike. I consider us Tnadang plus 1 and Mike is the 1. Now, with us getting Malcolm, Mike has become expendable.”
There’s a limit to the amount of doubt the editors can pile on a player and they’re certainly coming close to that limit with Mike. Some if not most viewers will start remembering the “Idiot Mike” that Varner saw and forget about the valiant Mike that was the heart of Kucha. Has the limit been crossed? Does Mike still have a chance of winning with this story? Well, he would soon prove ressourceful and get some more rice for the tribe but even that will be met with anger! That tells me there’s still a lot of potential to Mike’s story.
The Reward Challenge
When Kalabaw entered the challenge arena, the camera did show Malcolm but his expression revealed nothing about realizing that Denise was still there. Curious choice when a smile could have been inserted.
RC and Artis sat out for Tandang, meaning Abi would participate…maybe!
For a best of 5, it never got passed round 1 as Lisa, Skupin and Peter simply reached a stand-still with Denise, Jonathan and Carter.
The camera still showed us Denise’s determination before the start.
I laughed when Mike said: “This is like heaven” and Penner, face in the mud, replied: “Well, it’s like something.”
But there wasn’t much else to laugh about this challenge that was going nowhere fast.
Maybe it was the fear of seeing Abi participating in the next leg but Penner decided to make a deal: “Our rice for the sandwiches.”
Artis was asked to weigh in on this because it was his birthday.
He would have none of it. He wanted to win but he said: “Do what you want to do, Mike.”
The Reward
Jonathan: “We arrived, covered in mud…cleaned up…and sat down to the most delicious picnic I ever had.”
Carter: “…The sandwiches were all great. Hopefully, this will give us some kind of advantage.”
Kent: “It was great to see all that food but the fact that we don’t have rice is probably going to wear on us in a couple of days.”
Jonathan: “We realized that a little table off to the side had envelops with our name on them.”
Denise: “I knew what it was immediately: It was letters from home.”
Carter: “The tribe started reading the letters and we started tearing up. We are so far from reality out here that when we get a little glimpse of that, it hits in a place we are not used to.”
Kent: “After suffering from rain and being banged up; it was pretty neat.”
Denise: “Coming to this reward, it’s motivational fuel, emotional fuel that makes any rice that we gave up, totally worth it because now it’s new motivation that keeps us going.”
Jonathan: “We came in determined to win and I think this was a win. We walk away with this victory meal and these beautiful letters from home, we are going to be strong going into the immunity challenge.”
For a tribe that we had mostly written off, they had quite a nice showing during this reward. Everyone (except Katie) received two confessionals that made them look united and likable. Unfortunately, the editors probably did to Kalabaw what they do to many individuals that didn’t get much airtime before their final episode: Kalabaw was highlighted before their fall. Jonathan’s victory fell a little short as the immunity challenge would soon reveal.
Looking for long term stories: - Carter was just in the here and now of the reward.
- Jonathan looked forward to the next challenge.
- Kent looked to the next few days and the missing rice
- Denise’s confessional had more long term implications: Motivational and emotional fuel to keep going. Maybe it limits her to the family visit though.
Tandang – Day 15
One of the women apologized to Artis, saying they wanted to give him a birthday feast.
Artis: “It feels brutal that Kalabaw is enjoying the reward that we should have and we are back here, fighting for survival.” Artis told Malcolm it was a brilliant move by Penner. “What really bothered me was that we had a member of our tribe making decisions for our tribe who has done absolutely nothing for our tribe. And RC? Shut up. It’s not a victory.”
After receiving Kalabaw’s meager ration of rice, RC consoled the tribe by saying Kalabaw didn’t have any but Abi commented that they couldn’t even cook the rice.
Lisa: “When we came back, it was worse than a loss and it shouldn’t have been because, with a loss, you don’t get all their rice. But it was a giving up, a forfeit which is a double loss if you choose to focus your energy that way.”
Abi, the champion of challenges, was focusing her energy that way, saying it was the dumbest move in history.
Malcolm tried to put a positive spin on it but his voice was drowned.
Abi then had a confessional: “We gave up a reward challenge. We didn’t fight for it and I doubt that Kalabaw would give us all of their rice without having a Plan B. They have a boat, they have a spear. They can go out the fishing. They’re not stupid. Kalabaw totally used psychology and it worked.”
RC: “We never come back from a challenge and we’re happy but in Survivor world you sort of have to swallow your pride and do things that you don’t normally do. This is just nasty.”
Can you imagine the mood if they had been losing!
RC then told Mike that Artis was raising a storm, cursing at Mike.
Mike asked the simplest of questions: “Then why did he agree?”
Mike then compared Artis to a teenaged girl, whispering to everybody but not having the courage to confront him.
RC: “Artis, Pete and Abi are very nasty and angry. They are cruel but they have the upper hand. My strategy is to let Abi blow up constantly so I can slide under the radar but she’s like a Brazilian bomb that is about to blow up any second.”
Kalabaw – Day 16
It was supposed to be a beautiful day for fishing.
Carter: “We made a deal with the yellow tribe…In all honesty, I didn’t like the deal we came up with because there are no guarantee of food at the moment. Jonathan is pretty confident that he could catch fish but to me it’s a pretty risky deal.”
Katie: “Jonathan comes back and I’m like: “Did you catch anything?” Good Lord! That rice gave you immediate energy but now it’s gone and Jonathan is trying to stay positive by saying we have plenty of food. No we don’t.”
Note that the ones complaining about the deal are the young ones (except for Artis but he’s really like a teenaged girl!). Only Malcolm tried to put a positive spin on it but I think we are clearly seeing a generation gap forming. If the season does go that way, then we should note that the older generation has the numbers advantage.
Jonathan: “Carter is getting frustrated. I promised there’d be food and now…he’s starving. The deprivation doesn’t affect me like it affects some of these younger players but today we have an immunity challenge and it’s crucially important that we win today. We have to get some momentum back. The numbers are tipping badly. If we continue to lose, we are totally screwed.”
Note that there are no “we can do this” type confessionals for Kalabaw that we saw from Natalie in Foa Foa. All of their confessionals are fatalistic.
The Challenge
Probst once more noted that Abi was sitting out.
She told him it wasn’t her choice.
With Lisa and Denise launching balls, we had Artis and Penner at one post, Carter and Malcolm at the second, Jeff against Pete and RC against Katie.
Penner scored on the first throw.
Pete and RC replied for Tandang in the second round.
Playing the outfield, the baseball player scored 3 consecutive points for Kalabaw.
Tandang switched strategy, Skupin telling Lisa to go short for Malcolm.
That earned Tandang the next two points and a tie.
Realizing a bit too late that the game had moved to the infield, Kent switched positions with Carter but Malcolm did a little pass interference, throwing the baseball player to the ground to score the last point.
(A reminder of Dawson’s comment that football players are better athletes than Baseball players! And, on that note, Jeff must be a replacement referee because he never called that blatant foul!)
Tandang won immunity and Jeff told Abi that Malcolm deserved to hold the idol.
Kalabaw
Kent: “Carter was outmuscled and outmaneuvered by Malcolm so we ended up short again. Another disappointment; we have to go to tribal Council and vote somebody off. Penner and I have an alliance but I am still on the fence right now. I still don’t know which way I am going to jump.”
Carter and Kent discussed the value of Denise, the worthlessness of Katie and the dangers of Penner.
Once more, Kent’s words (“We didn’t want a veteran to win”) were captioned on screen.
Carter: “Jeff thinks it may be a good idea to make a big move and get rid of Jonathan but, at the same time, going into the merge with Penner might be a good thing because the eyes are going to be on him, not on me and Jeff because no one wants a returning player to win.”
Jeff ended the conversation with: “I think we need to pull the Penner Punch. We just have to make sure he doesn’t see it coming so he doesn’t use the idol. That’s all.”
Hearing Jeff once more say that they don’t want a veteran to win now makes it likely that we see just that happening. The newbies missed their chance so now, I expect Carter and Jeff to regret for the rest of their lives when Jonathan blindsides them and goes with Skupin and his tribe. That will be the real “Penner Punch” as only Jonathan can deliver it!
Then, in a marvelous little scene, Carter turned to Jonathan who had joined them in the shelter and asked: “Penner, what do you want to do? Katie or Penner…I mean Denise?”
Kent noticed the faux-pas and shook his head but Jonathan seemed to accept it as an honest mix-up.
The audience certainly noticed it though! And it will count as the first hint that Jonathan sees it coming.
Jonathan: “To win this game, I’m going to have to make big moves out of desperation. That’s what happens: If you’re down in numbers and your back starts getting put up against the wall. Katie has got to go, she is not useful to us. I need her gone.”
Note the change of sound quality when Jonathan starts talking about Katie. I think the part about making big moves comes from a different time frame than this episode. Booting Katie is certainly not the big move Jonathan was talking about so there’s a lack of logic in this confessional that is more likely coming from the editors than from Jonathan himself.
The first part of the confessional comes from a time when Jonathan will truly feel that his back is against the wall. That will probably be at the merge. It was inserted here to put the wheels in motion but Jonathan’s words at TC show that he wasn’t yet desperate. Expect a big move by Penner, one that Carter and Kent will indeed regret for the rest of their lives.
Katie: “When I went over to the three guys, right away without me asking, Penner goes: “It’s Denise. I’m thinking he is feeding me a big line of BS...”
Katie rightfully called Penner the wild card, saying she trusted Denise a hell of a lot more.
Now we have two players set up for a big move!
Kent: “I came into this game knowing that I would have to lie, knowing that I would have to jeopardize my integrity, my character so I am still weighing my options and all of them have to do with furthering myself in this game.”
Note that, after Pete last week, Kent now delivers a confessional that reminds us of Kim’s last season: Weighing his options, going further in the game…Why don’t these confessional sound as promising as they did when Kim delivered them? Because of the season’s themes: The ones that have the options or think they do, the ones in control, will find out that they aren’t in control. The next confessional by Kent would drive the point home:
Kent: “The hard decision is voting Jonathan out…It’s a crap shoot. You go up to the plate not knowing if you are going to strike out or hit a home run but you go up to the plate swinging the bat.”
There are a lot more strike outs than homeruns in a season! Jeff failed to make the hard decision. “You’re OUT!”
Tribal Council
When asked who was in trouble, Katie and Denise raised their hand.
Denise explained she was still the new girl on the block.
Katie admitted she didn’t perform well in challenges.
When Jeff asked Jonathan about his feeling of security, Penner answered: “One doesn’t want to volunteer one’s self and give everyone else the notion that “Maybe I should vote for Penner.” Whether I am vulnerable or not, I want to give the impression that I feel confident.”
(That is a new version of “The game is afoot!)
Kent said that every votes gets tougher. He added that the votes will be blindsides because they like each other.
Jonathan explained that it would be so because the votes won’t be personal.
Jeff asked Kent if he played any games that was like Survivor.
Kent flat out said: “No. This game sucks.”
They agreed that it sucked because it was complicated. “You are going to blindside your friends because you are too guilty to tell him that we don’t want you here anymore.”
All the while, the camera was on Jonathan as if to tell us he understood that Kent was really talking about him. This is our second hint that Jonathan sees it coming.
Katie told Jeff her vote would be based on loyalty.
Jonathan said that Katie could be sending a message to someone. He added: “They know I would do anything in my power to make this work out and it might ricochet and one of them might get voted out.”
Before sending them to vote, Jeff rejoiced: “Everybody knows it will be a blindside, the question is; who is it going to be?”
While voting, Katie told us that Jonathan isn’t to be trusted.
When Jeff read the vote against him, Jonathan laughed and turned towards Kent.
That was our third hint that Jonathan sees it coming and will deliver the Penner Punch himself. Certainly he’ll realize that this vote came from Katie but why would she vote against him if she hadn’t been told to do so? The only reason she voted against him and not Denise had to be because that’s what she had been told could happen. Jonathan is smart AND paranoid enough to understand that implication.
Jeff sent them back to camp by saying that anything could happen if they were strong and united.
They are weak and divided!
The StoryThis episode pointed us directly to Jonathan as the catalyst of the whole end game. Cook Islands’ main narrational theme was the “Jonathan camera”: All the players and the events were shown from Jonathan’s point of view. If Jonathan liked someone, they got a good edit, if he didn’t their edit suffered. Parvati had a nice edit up to the mutiny when Jonathan joined her and finally gave us an opinion on her: “She didn’t know anything about Surviving and didn’t deserve to be there.” That was how she was portrayed up to the moment that Jonathan left and them, just like that, Yul told us that she wasn’t that bad!! The same could be said of Nathan and Becky and Adam, etc…
This season, I think everything will depend on the Penner Punch. His actions will decide the game and while I know Carter and Kent will regret it for the rest of their lives, I can oonly guess who will profit from it. Kent’s mantra that they don’t want a returning player to win points in the direction of the returning players though. One thing seems certain; the winner will not be one of the young ones who are nasty and cruel.
The CharactersThe Nasty and Cruel Players:
Abi, Pete and Artis: Somehow, the Penner Punch will also ricochet on them and they won’t see it coming. How? Probably because of a power shift that will come from Jonathan’s move. Their portrayal is much too negative to expect any other outcome than a comedic fall. Their actions could have been spun much more positively because they weren’t wrong: It is questionable to give up in a challenge. It isn’t a good idea to eat big portions. But the rational comments we heard told us that these three are overreacting, acting in an illogical manner. That kills their story (but that isn’t the first hint we’ve received about their failure).
The Ones that Will Regret It:
Carter: I expect he will be the first to pay for the Penner Punch. He was shown to be quite dumb when he asked Penner if he wanted to eliminate Penner. His story was lacking in many other ways but we saw him in more focus this time and he was outmaneuvered. By Malcolm in the challenge and by Penner in the game.
Kent: At first, I thought that his mantra would be used to tell us that a returning player couldn’t win but to hear it repeated in an episode where he missed his chance, where he didn’t make the tough call, then I see him voting for the returning player in the end after all. This episode was a strike out for Kent and he probably won’t get another trip to the plate, meaning that the bat will never be in his hands again, that he just lost control.
The Catalyst
Jonathan: I could be mistaken but I see Jonathan as the catalyst for this season’s outcome, not its final product. A big move out of desperation sounds more like something that will totally shake up the game, take the control out of everyone’s hands and give us an unlikely winner. Penner did it once when he mutinied and only Yul and his powerful idol prevented a total collapse of his former tribe. There are no Yuls this season and the idol isn’t as powerful so Penner’s actions will destroy Kalabaw and himself along the way and probably shake Tandang enough that its own power structure will collapse.
Sidelined : This episode put so much energy is preparing Jonathan‘s story that our long term players had limited participation:
Lisa : For the second week, her role was limited to narrating the events of Tandang. She still fits with the main themes but there isn’t any progression to her story.
Malcolm: The main focus was on his performance during the immunity challenge. Jeff praised him for it and we even heard Kent commenting on his abilities to outmuscle and outmaneuver Carter. But we already expected that from him. We had brief glimpses of his thoughts on the game but they are mostly limited to surviving the immediate dangers or to boast about some imaginary power. There is no long term connections surrounding Malcolm and for a large character that is bothersome.
Denise: The episode never gave us her thoughts about being in danger and we didn’t see what she did to save herself. We did hear that she felt in danger so this would have been the perfect episode to showcase her abilities to regroup and influence the decisions. Unfortunately, all she had was that early talk with Katie who was the one planting a seed. There is still care given to Denise’s edit but a winner’s thoughts are never ignored when the vote could possibly go against them. Hopefully this was just a pause for Denise but it looked really strange.
RC: Once more, RC was put on the defensive, first by the recap that still doesn’t want us to forget her misery then by Artis after the reward. I found it interesting that RC decided to use Lisa’s strategy of letting Abi blow up. Could the two reasonable women have already come to an understanding that we are not seeing to keep us fearing for RC? I will say that over and above the care we see given to Denise, Malcolm and Lisa, there is some manipulation to RC’s story. She’s always been shown to be in danger, (even the ocean is against her!) yet she hasn’t gone once to Tribal Council. The anti-Denise still has just about as much importance to the story as the sex therapist. That would be something to consider seriously as manipulating the edit for the winner if someone else hadn’t received even more manipulations.
Mike: Can you believe that one of the Heroes of Australia was called the worst returning player ever? And I am not talking about the listless Colby that showed he was a poor player both times he returned. How can a move that deprived the enemy of all their food reserves be called the dumbest ever? The editors seem to be going out of their way to dump on Mike, to destroy his reputation by showing the audience they were right not to invite him back for the first All-Stars. However, if that was the intent, if they wanted us to say that Mike is useless; then why show us Skupin as the one responsible for their comeback in the immunity challenge? From the sideline, the “coach” told his “QB” to throw short to Malcolm.
There has to be an alternative and that could only be that they have a beautiful comeback story on the back-burner for him. Imagine, this tireless worker, hunter, fisher is said to have done nothing for his tribe and we have no way of saying that it isnt true. Have we seen him hunting, fishing or even just looking for fruits? No but we know that cannot be, that people don’t change that much. Therefore, Mike’s contributions are hidden from us and there has to be a reason for it.
There is so much manipulation to his edit that I have to believe that Mike is the winner of Survivor – The Philippines.