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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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