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Sam Wallace CTI feature

Pop CultureSeptember 17, 2019

Celebrity Treasure Island rankings: Where dreams are castles in the sand

Sam Wallace CTI feature

It was another wild week in our favourite island paradise, as our remaining celebrities continued their quest to win cash for charity. Tara Ward power ranks. 

The bells of change have rung on Celebrity Treasure Island, and we’re now knee deep in an individual game of trickery, ping-pongery, and Tim-Tammery. The two teams merged into Team Kākāriki, but the divisions of Kahu and Mako continued to run deep. Deeper than a soft tissue massage on a secluded beach, deeper than the sound of pork crackling echoing through an empty stomach, deeper than an oar jammed through a ring hidden in sand and flicked into a basket tied round your waist.

What? Never mind. Give me all your clues and give me all your Tim Tams, and I will give you my Celebrity Treasure Island love forever. This week we farewelled three key players, we built the sandcastles of our dreams, and Sam Wallace managed to piss everyone off while kicking their arses in the challenges. Here are this week’s power rankings, please set fire to them immediately.

Eliminated: Eric

What better way to go out than to set fire to the thing the CTI contestants need the most? Eric tried to burn the competition down when he set his clue alight after he was eliminated, but the players just laughed. That Eric, so competitive! If Eric burned the entire camp down, they’d still probably see the funny side of it. “We expected nothing less!” they chortled, as they waved Eric goodbye. Burns all round.

Eliminated: Moses

First Matty McLean, now my precious Moses Mackay? I will never accept this travesty of justice against nice blokes with double-barrelled ‘M’ names. Moses’ departure bought a tear to the Wiz’s eyes, because not only did Moses win a massive $17,500 for his chosen charity, he’s an all-round good guy with feet too big to withstand an 8mm foot hold. “He should be on Love Island, not Celebrity Island,” the Wiz said, but it is what it is. Let’s all raise a tall glass of congealed smoothie to Moses, all class from start to finish.

Eliminated: Barbara

“You can’t change the wind, but you can adjust the sails,” was Barb’s CTI motto, and now she’s gone we must release the spinnaker and float aimlessly into a sea of despair. Goodbye, fierce Barbs, we miss you already.

5) Shane

Shane reckoned his sandcastle monster mated with a sheep. Put it in Te Papa, ASAP.

4) Athena

If I ever have the good fortune of visiting a tropical island, I hope to find Athena waiting for me in her sand convertible, top down and wind through her hair, living her best sandcastle life. I’m picking Athena to make the top three, mostly down to the way she answered the age old quandary ‘what do a goat and a man have in common?’ “You can milk them?” replied Athena. Let’s stop this whole charade and just give the treasure to Athena immediately.

3) Sam

“I didn’t even wipe my bum.” Epic words for an epic week for Sam, who one minute was power-chucking through his bed, the next power-playing his way through an elimination challenge. Sam needs a win like he needs insect repellent, because after putting Shannon up for three eliminations in a row and failing to grease his way into Mako’s good books, he’s on CTI death row. “I’m becoming the most hated player in this game,” he reckons, but on the flipside, he’s also the best Merman we’ve ever seen on primetime television.

2) Gary

To be fair, Sam’s making a shitload more power plays than the Wiz, but I cannot go past the Wiz for pure comedy joy. It’s the laughter after his spills and falls, his constant delight in the face of adversity, the way he cackled his way though interrogating Sam and Shannon about why they left Mako to starve. He’s a laughing legend. I bet he even giggles in his sleep.

The only thing Gary wasn’t laughing about was the Sandcastle Charity Challenge. “Honestly, I don’t know what it is,” the Wiz said of his creation, but whatever the hell it was, you can bet it was laughing its sandy face right off.

1) Shannon

Holy baked beans, Shannon is incredible. She reigned supreme in three consecutive eliminations, she knows seven secret clues, and most amazingly, she can balance on tiny pieces of wood without plummeting to the ground. I bet she even knows how to fix climate change and fold a fitted sheet at the same time, that’s how awesome she is.

Shannon is a mother-flipping powerhouse, and I will cry into my 9 litres of ice cream and 18 packets of Tim Tams and ten family-sized Pizza Hut pizzas if she doesn’t make it to the final three. Next week is finals week, so let’s hope our dreams aren’t just sheep shagging monsters in the sand.

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