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Pop CultureJune 6, 2017

Survivor Power Rankings, Week Five – The chips are down for Mike

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Superfan Joseph Harper tackles the fourth week of Survivor NZ, including Barb’s third death and a French fry feast. Click here for last week.

We have a merge! Great stuff. All the sweeter for the nice All Blacks themed buffs. As suspected, the likely lads’ plan of ‘treat everyone who isn’t in our alliance badly’, didn’t come off and now they could be in for a Pagonging. Go the boys. Go one by one to Redemption Island.

On the other hand, hope springs anew for Shay and the Shay-faithful among us (me). She might finally get her chance to get Tom out of the game! Then again, with Lee and – if I read correctly the silly inclusion of him voting without an immunity necklace in the ‘next time on Survivor’ preview – Mike out of the picture, the majority have enough of a buffer that they might decide to pull some buzzy stuff.

Main takeaways

The less visually stimulating highlights/lowlights include the crazy low-hanging immunity necklace and the fact that Matty Ice didn’t make a single funny balls pun during the challenge with balls. But mostly it was a real foodie’s paradise this week. First and foremost – literal takeaways:

Call me casual, but I did not foresee a massive plate of chips being part of the merge feast. Speaking of divination, congrats to my brother who had $5 on the phrase “survivor enchilada (survivor stuffed tortilla)” appearing as a subtitle at some point during the season.

How about this genuine Bruce Bogtrotter alert?!

Get the Trunchbull on the horn! Also funny that they kept calling the cake “the little brown beauty”.

#1 AVI

Avi continues to have his finger on the various pulses of the game. He’s also introducing pretty extreme measures to ensure transparency.

Everyone seems to like Avi but, for some reason, nobody’s talking about how they can’t beat him at the end. Hmmm.

#2 BARB

For the third time this season, Barb was pronounced legally dead this week. Just like The Undertaker, she once again rose up and choke slammed the lil diva boys who were mean to her and Nate back in the olden times.

Call me evil, but I’m loving this brutal Barb that talks shit about people while sloshing her cab-sav out of her coconut and referencing decapitation. It’s cool. Go Barb.

#3 NATE

I don’t think it’s ever a good sign when the editors use footage of you napping. Snoozers are losers.

Still, if Nate and Barb are going to drive this Survivor car right through to the game’s end, they need to be well rested (ala those signs on State Highway One).

#4 SHAY

I swear on the Survivor gods that when Shay won her way back into the game I jumped off my couch and did a fist pump and pulled the fingers at each and every member of El Entente Enchilada.

Shay’s back baby, and it’s time for some sick revenge.

#5 TOM

Nobody is buying Tom’s fake non-vote for Shay for even a second, yet the teacher from Tauranga survives another week. Will he be karmically owned for sacking up with the He-man Woman Haters alliance? Will Avi still love him when he finds out that Tommy has been playing rice and beans with Jak? I have no idea. Screentime alone suggests Tommy is here for a while longer. This teacher… has tenure.

#6 SHANNON

How is everybody else getting tanned as hell, but Shannon is becoming more and more like the demon from the Grudge every week!?

Maybe I’m naive, but I have a feeling the alliance formerly known as Boytown are going to 100% overlook their own exhaustive alienation of their fellow tribe mates and instead 100% blame Shannon for their demise. Even though I’m loving Shannon and her cool sneaky gameplay, I don’t like the outlook for Geraldine’s finest.

#7 SALA

Who wouldn’t want to give this lovely man 100k? Shay even bequeathed her lovely sarong to Sala. This is exactly the issue, unfortunately. Everyone loves Sala. Everyone knows everyone loves Sala. There’s no way anyone is stupid enough to take him to the end and guarantee a drumming.

#8 MIKE

It started so well for Mikey. There was cake. There was a massive meal of hot chippies.

But then it turned bad. He saw his alliance placed under the thumb of Nate and Barb, and the apple of his Survivor eye sent packing. Cue depressed stare into the middle distance:

The player with the nicest hair in Nicaragua is about to have his chicken bros come home to roost. Unless he wins immunity (like I said, I don’t think this will be the case based on the teaser), I don’t see a world in which Mike isn’t sent packing nek week. 

Of all the players left though, Mike probably has the best shot of making a redemption run back into the game.

#9 JAK

Jak is seemingly barely tolerated by his tribe mates. His alliance is in tatters, but if the others are on the good oil, they should recognise that Jak looks like a pretty succulent goat at this stage and drag his ass to the end.

Jak’s game is looking totally out of his hands at this point, which isn’t a great place to be. And that is to say nothing of the disrespectful unlicensed acapella Audioslave clip (RIP Chris Cornell). Too soon bro.

#10 LEE

I don’t think this could have been a more obvious boot episode for Lee. The man with the million dollar locks has been totally absent and then, boom, this week it’s screentime ahoy. I guess maybe it’s good he hasn’t featured much if he has been regularly going on these tradie reigns of terror. Cocksie he ain’t.

Rude viral cop imho.

GEORGIA (Eliminated)

I thought Georgia was a pre-merge spark plug, so it’s gutting to see her go down like this. Still, at least she went out with a kind of badass dummy spit.

 

RIP Georgia.


This content, like all our television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent folk at Lightbox. Do us and yourself a favour by clicking here to start a FREE 30 day trial of this truly wonderful service.

 

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Pop CultureJune 6, 2017

Vote for your new favourite webseries to get made in TVNZ’s New Blood

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With voting for TVNZ’s New Blood webseries competition underway, panelist Alex Casey rounds up the top 10 finalists. 

You know how fancy overseas countries have a pilot season, where all the exciting brand new shows battle it out to get picked up by networks? New Zealand has finally put on its grown-up pants with TVNZ’s New Blood competition, searching for our next big local webseries by way of public vote. Hundreds of pilot entries were flung in from across the country, all hoping to secure that $100k to make their full series a reality.

I was lucky enough to be a judge for the competition and spent a whole weekend shrieking, laughing and cringing at the weird and wonderful worlds created by both amateurs and professionals alike. There were aliens, there was cask wine, there were too many ex-Shortland Street stars. After a rigorous vetting process, here are the final 10 entries for your consideration. Have a cruise through, pick your favourite, and cast your precious vote here.

Starship Kids

When you die, you don’t do anything. When you’re alive, you play.

A beautifully shot and achingly cute mini-documentary series, ‘Blood Sugar’ is the first in a series that will follow kids living with medical conditions and their lives in and out of Starship Children’s hospital. Looking at heavy stuff through a child’s eyes and heart-bursting narration, we run the gambit from getting blood tests to deciding if an octopus (starfish) is a boy or a girl.

Libros

Until boobs go out of fashion, people will be buying boobs in bulk

Evoking the same surreal tangents of Peep Show, Libros stars comedian Cori Gonzalez-Macuer as a graphic designer looking for a room. His search comes to an end when he finds a man in a dressing gown and a nerdy uni student who were all born on the same day under the shining constellation of Libra. But why are there pictures of Susan Sarandon everywhere?

The Woolston Complex

What is my life?

Starring Billy T winner David Correos, mockumentary The Woolston Complex follows yet another strange guy in a dressing gown as he negotiates life from his house bus in the strange, bougie Woolston Boutique Shopping Complex. Channelling Chris Lilley, Shay Horay plays multiple characters from an outrageous masseuse to a butcher with a heart (lip ring) of gold.

Oddly Even

She’s taken a vow of silence until the whole world becomes vegan

Juggling her motley crew of flatmates, paying off a mortgage, trying to find the perfect man AND start a successful smoothie bowl food truck, Olivia is living in a frazzled hell of her own creation. But what happens when her estranged sister of eight years shows up at her door? Oddly Even takes the cringe of Bridget Jones’ Diary, and chills it with a bit of family drama.

Shop Girls

Get in there and clean up your fucking turd

A workplace comedy good enough to give you the shits, Shop Girls goes behind the shiny veneer of retail and “hi darl” to bring you what really happens in the back room. Starring Grace Palmer, recently deceased Lucy from Shortland Street, and Lucinda Hare from Auckward Love, Shop Girls is like Broad City in a Miss Crabb dress.

Grandma Knows Best

“It’s like your birthday but you’re not one year closer to death – yet.”

A cask wine-fuelled talk show filmed in the lounge of an old folk’s home, Grandma Knows Best throws one guest under the searing interrogation of Ngaire Chambers, played by Samuel Christopher. In this pilot episode, Ngaire meets performer and writer Chris Parker to talk Spice Girls, eating disorders and fighting in the war.

The Fucket List

Liz, I’ve got it. I’m having a urethra moment.

Two millennials get turfed out by their parents and dreamcatcher-making boyfriends because neither of them can make human connections. Finding each other in a haze of best friend posters and whisky, they decide to share each other’s little black books in order to become the ultimate: Eskimo Inuit sisters. Very important Art Green cameo. 

Dick

Did you bring crystallized ginger to a potluck party? Nobody wants that shit.

Starring a myriad of TV stars including Josh Thomson, Aidee Walker and Nic Sampson, Dick follows the Paul-Jennings-for-adults scenario of an overdose of women’s multivitamins gone awry. When notorious dickhead Micky loses his own manhood overnight, his friends and families must pry out the truth over bowls of Twisties before his birthday potluck.

Cheeky First Dates

I love the way that you blame your farts on gluten

Perhaps one of New Zealand’s first ever spinoff webseries of a webseries, Cheeky First Dates is a prequel of sorts to The Adventures of Suzy Boon. Watch sad recent-singleton Cheeky37 stumble through the world of online dating, first clashing with a strange woman named Grape (Morgana O’Reilly) who has an affinity for Antonio Banderas and looks eerily like his ex-girlfriend…

The Sisterhood

Do you ever get sick of jumping around all the time?

Imagine if everytime you boned, you were transported to another time period? The Sisterhood follows a group of women who converge across different decades, all bound by one pesky affliction much more annoying than an STI. Amanda Billing plays Diana Striar, a romance novelist who draws inspiration from her sexy travels through time.


This content was brought to you by TVNZ New Blood. Click here to vote for your favourite webseries to win $100k 

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