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On week four of Survivor  NZ, Tess and Adam have a kiki.
On week four of Survivor NZ, Tess and Adam have a kiki.

Pop CultureMay 13, 2018

Survivor NZ recap, week 4: Who does the Infinity War fade away?

On week four of Survivor  NZ, Tess and Adam have a kiki.
On week four of Survivor NZ, Tess and Adam have a kiki.

It’s been a huge week on Survivor NZ. The game is really heating up and absolutely no one is safe. Luke Harries takes a look at what went down this week.

Adam & Tess v Dylan & Kaysha

A cold war of sorts came to a head this week at Khang Khaw, between Adam and Tess – the Queens of Mean – and underdogs Dylan and Kaysha. By now it’s absolutely no secret that Adam and Tess have it out for Dylan especially. Their favourite way to pass the time these days is to lay about bitching about Dylan and plotting his demise.

Adam really can’t stop thinking about how much he hates Dylan, and this week he revealed his inner thespian to act out Dylan’s many dimensions.

The dimensions of Dylan, as portrayed by Adam.

Leading up to the immunity challenge, it’s starting to sound like Adam and Tess are ready to head to tribal and start making some cuts, and those cuts rhyme with “Shmaysha” and “Shmylan”. Khang Khaw’s pathetic showing at the immunity challenge has Kaysha suspecting that Tess threw the challenge on purpose. I think she might be on the money there.

A feud is brewing…

Speaking of Dylan…

This really hasn’t been a great week for Dylan. After avoiding Tribal Council for three weeks in a row, Dylan suspects his luck may not last too much longer. We had more shots this week of Dylan sitting alone, and I won’t lie, it started to make me feel really sad. So I thought I could try and cheer things up a bit for Dylan with a change of scenery:

Dylan finds some peace and quiet at Te Papa, Mission Bay, the Sky Tower and Hobbiton.

Dylan doesn’t seem to be doing himself any favours at the immunity challenge either. Dylan had some choice words for Chani, calling out their trend of voting out the strong females in their tribe. Dylan even rejected Arun’s high five! You can’t just reject a high five… that shit will come back to you. All of this didn’t go down too well at Chani – so if Dylan manages to stay in the game long enough to reach a switch or a merge, he may still be up shit creek without a paddle.

Smoko in Paradise

In this week’s reward challenge, the tribes went head to head for some more mud wrestling – sumo-style this time. The prize for the winning tribe? Tea, coffee, and some biscuits – your classic kiwi smoko. The castaways may be thousands of kilometers from home, but one lucky tribe will get to pretend they’re back in the office break room having an awkward conversation about which brands of peanut butter are the best.

This is the Survivor equivalent of SPQR.

I think this reward really reminds us how tough it is out there for the castaways. After two weeks of minimal food, even a pathetic stale shortbread from the office bikkie container is going to taste heavenly – tasty enough to have Matt giggling like a schoolgirl.

Love at first bite.

Strat Chat

It’s been a minute since we heard from Lisa, and she isn’t too happy with Dylan’s narrative of the tribe being divided into the cool kids and the outcasts. Lisa has been playing a quiet game so far, and although she isn’t part of the Khang Khaw “tight five”, she definitely doesn’t want to be seen as being on the outs. Lisa would very much like to be excluded from your narrative, Dylan.

Mean Girls: Thailand.

Khang Khaw’s three back to back immunity challenge wins have put them in a great position, but some of the tribe are starting to feel that a trip to tribal might not be the worst thing. Successful tribes are often tempted to throw a challenge to shake out some of the weaker players, but there’s always the risk that the plan can blow up in their faces. We’ll have to wait and see if this strategy works out for Khang Khaw in the long run.

Over at Chani, Arun is ready to snake his way up to the top. Thanks to a bit of collusion with JT and his kind-of rigged sticks, Arun found himself at The Outpost this week, along with Josh from Khang Khaw. Arun didn’t beat around the bush, and was pretty direct in asking Josh to form an alliance. It’s hard to say whether such an opportunistic alliance will end well for either of these two, but as Arun keeps saying, it’s good to have his fingers in a lot of pies.

Arun and his pies.

After the immunity challenge, Khang Khaw is in for their first tribal council, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, things aren’t looking great for Dylan. Dylan and Kaysha scramble to save Dylan, and Kaysha has a plan to convince the rest of the tribe to split their votes. We saw Dylan hunting around camp in a last-ditch effort to find an idol, but judging by the tremble in his voice, he had pretty much lost all hope.

Tribal Council

Off the bat, sparks fly between Adam and Dylan – surprise surprise. The two face off at Tribal, and it doesn’t take long for Adam’s claws to come out. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Adam’s nasty side, but damn, that got pretty savage, even for Survivor. For someone with his back against the wall, I have to admire Dylan’s composure during Adam’s cartoonish tyrade.

In a pretty shocking twist, it was Kaysha, not Dylan, who was voted out in the end. Kaysha has been an incredibly strong player in this game, and I think her social game would have made her a huge threat after a switch or a merge. In the end, I think keeping Dylan and blindsiding Kaysha was a super smart move for the Khang Khaw tight five.

Thanks a lot, Thanos.

Blindside Rating: 9/10

Don’t you even try to lie to me and tell me you saw this coming. I am shooketh. I need a minute. We all knew Khang Khaw’s first tribal would be interesting, but I really did not see this coming – I think the only person who was more surprised was Dylan himself.

Chisholm-ism of the week

Matt has been steering this Survivor ship with such a calm and casual charisma, and I think nothing sums that up better than the way he refers to the immunity idol as “old mate”.

Survivor NZ Quick Stats

3 – week losing streak comes to an end for Chani

3 – biscuits each for Khang Khaw

3 – bowlers on the ladder for Chani’s first challenge win


This content, like all 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 CultureMay 12, 2018

The best of Lightbox’s mums to watch this Mother’s Day

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You want mothers? Lightbox has ’em. Tara Ward takes a look at the best TV mothers to hang with this weekend.

Mothers. They’re everywhere these days; at work, at the gym, on the television. They’ve even had the audacity to give themselves a day in their own honour (it’s tomorrow, FYI). Nowhere is safe from women with children, and I don’t know who let this happen but time is progress and we may as well embrace it.

So in honour of the blessed ‘holiday’ that is Mother’s Day, I’ve delved into Lightbox’s bag of tricks to pull out some of the best mothers on TV. These mums are all fine examples of parenting and 100% guaranteed excellent role models. Sure, they swear, they overshare, but most importantly, they love their kids as much as they love a giant Toblerone. Prepare to be #blessed.

Della in Raised by Wolves

If Raised by Wolves matriarch Della wrote a parenting handbook, it’d be filled with gems like “kids, if you get lost, find the oldest, fattest Nana you can. She won’t be moving far and I’ll be able to find you”.

Della is singlehandedly raising a tribe of independent children on a council estate in Wolverhampton, preparing them for life in the capitalist, misogynistic shitstorm we like to call ‘the real world’.  She’s stoic as hell, calls bullshit when she sees it, and will likely burn you through with her laser stare of disdain. She also uses phrases like “bifurcated arse cheeks” and once called Fireman Sam a “twat”, which makes her Mother of the Year imo.

Raised by Wolves is parenting at its finest: fierce, formidable, and flipping funny.

Parenting hack: A massive Toblerone makes everything better. Also, “nothing makes an unwelcome swelling disappear faster than the sight of an axe”.

Georgia in Love, Nina

Let’s all pack up and move to 1980s North London, so we can be enveloped in the maternal embrace of Helena Bonham Carter. The Oscar-nominated legend stars in delightful comedy-drama Love, Nina as Georgia, a busy working single mother who hires an inexperienced live-in nanny to look after her two boisterous sons. Crazy misunderstandings ensue, but HBC remains unrattled throughout, spending most of the series arching one eyebrow in restrained annoyance. Glorious.

Parenting hack: Outsource childcare ASAP. Also, skip bins are perfectly acceptable playgrounds.

Beverly in The Goldbergs

Personal boundaries don’t exist in Beverly Goldberg’s world, because she loves her kids more than jazzercize and roller-skating put together. She puts the mother into smother, the hell into helicopter parenting, and she’ll not rest until the world realises how “delicious” the fruit of her loins truly are.

The most delicious thing about this comedy set in “1980-something” is Beverly herself. Sassier than her collection of sequin jumpers, Beverly’s parenting style is 99% love, 1% shoulder pads. Don’t fight it any longer: squeeze into your spandex, get into Beverly’s groove and embrace the Bevolution.

Parenting hack: “Don’t forget to wash your bottom!”

Cathy in Mum

All hail Cathy, the most tolerant parent in television. Cathy puts up with a lot of crap – her husband just died, her son is a kind-hearted imbecile, and his girlfriend spreads glitter through the house – yet she remains eternally calm and composed. Sure, she escapes to the loo for some peace and quiet, but not once does she shout “FOR FECK’S SAKE STOP LEAVING BISCUIT CRUMBS IN MY BED” like some mothers I might be know.

Lesley Manville gives a BAFTA-nominated performance as Cathy, who’s quietly adjusting to life as a widow. Mum is a gentle, wry comedy that stays with you long after you’ve finished watching, and great news: the second season is coming soon to Lightbox.

Parenting hack: Nod. Smile. Rinse. Repeat.

Elizabeth in The Americans

Let’s give a secret spy salute of admiration to Elizabeth Jennings, who runs a travel agency, works as a KGB secret agent, and still makes time to help her kids with their homework. She’s also a right hoot at dress-up parties, with all those wigs and glasses she stashes next to the dead body in her car boot.

I don’t know how she does it, and I’m not going to ask. Elizabeth has super quick spy reflexes and once killed a man after he asked for a cigarette, so I’m not going anywhere near that tricky “can women have it all?” rabbit hole.

Parenting hack: A thousand wigs hide a thousand sins.

Ellen in The Replacement

As if having a new wee babe isn’t stressful enough, imagine what happens when your work replacement turns out to be an evil nutbar with a secret past. This is the quandry architect Ellen faces during her maternity leave, when replacement Paula becomes her nemesis and Ellen’s seemingly perfect life begins to unravel before her very exhausted eyes.

Still, what’s the worst that could happen? Prepare yourselves for this gripping BBC thriller filled with more surprising twists and turns than you can shake a giant Toblerone at.


Watch all these boss mothers and more this Mother’s Day (and beyond) on Lightbox right here:

This content, like all 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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