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The hapless castaways from Survivor NZ Season Two!
The hapless castaways from Survivor NZ Season Two!

Pop CultureApril 30, 2018

Survivor NZ recap, week 2: Some melons, a cheeky bum and a tight five

The hapless castaways from Survivor NZ Season Two!
The hapless castaways from Survivor NZ Season Two!

It’s week two of Survivor NZ and Luke Harries is jumping back in the drink to see what our Kiwi castaways got up to in the Thai jungle.

Cracks start to show in Khang Khaw

Viewers got an extra special treat during the first reward challenge as Matt climbed out of the drink to reveal “a little bit of skin” as Matt Chisholm modestly put it. The Survivor franchise is no stranger to a bit of cheeky nudity, so I’m glad that Kiwi fans can enjoy the fleeting juvenile delight of a bare bum.

The Full Moon Party definitely came early to this corner of Thailand.

The Outpost

This week we were introduced to a new twist on Survivor NZ called The Outpost, where each week the tribes select one castaway to visit the outpost for a mystery challenge, dilemma, or literally anything else the showrunners dream up.

The inaugural Outpost challenge is a Survivor classic which saw JT and Tess go head to head in a fire making challenge. Tess absolutely dominated the challenge, and unlike JT, managed to avoid getting a face full of fire.

Liar liar face on fire.

Still, JT isn’t one to let something like “losing the challenge” get in the way of an advantage in the game, and doesn’t hesitate in asking Tess to see the contents of her winning clue, catching the Survivor rookie off guard.

Like every bare-ankled normcore bro who tries to bum a cigarette off a stranger outside St Kevin’s Arcade, JT reminds us here that to get what you want in Survivor, you kinda have to be a shady dick.

Adam’s Melon Masterclass

It was an especially emotional week for Adam who was reunited with his absolute favourite thing in the world, watermelon. Khang Khaw’s reward for winning the first challenge of the week was a juicy spread of tropical fruit. While the girls discussed how much like lollies the pineapple was going to taste like (heaps like lollies, apparently) Adam had his sights set on one thing and one thing only: that juicy juicy watermelon.

It’s gonna be sweet.

Dude loves his watermelon, and he dropped some serious melon knowledge. Does your melon have a yellow spot? It’s gonna be sweet. Sounds dense when you tap it? You know it’s sweet. Sugar spots? Oh baby that’s sweet. Take it from a guy with a watermelon tattoo – this is serious stuff. I can only imagine how amazing this fruit would taste after days of next to no food, and the whole tribe was getting stuck in, including Lisa, who opted for an interesting sucking technique on her melon slice.

Everyone has their own way of enjoying their sweet reward.

Strat Chat

In the Khang Khaw tribe (which Dylan would like to remind readers of the correct pronunciation), a majority alliance has formed, with Josh, Brad, Matt, Tess and Adam teaming up to form a “tight five”.

Early in the episode the majority alliance singled out Dylan as being on the bottom of the tribe. I was pretty sad to see Dylan on the outs with his tribe, since he’s for sure one of this season’s biggest Survivor fans. Josh even called him “a bit of a goat”.

I couldn’t help but notice he said this to Tess – who has no prior knowledge of Survivor at all – and Adam, who spent all of last week doing absolutely nothing around camp and hoping no one would notice. Luckily for Dylan, Khang Khaw won immunity this week and avoided tribal council for a second week, but I fear he may still fall victim to his tribemates’ terrible judgement in the coming weeks.

The first rule of the tight five: never talk about the tight five.

Tribal Council

After another immunity challenge defeat, Chani were back at tribal for the second week in a row. Sensing she was on the chopping block this week, Karla made her case to stay in the game. Karla felt that she was undervalued by her tribe, and she hadn’t had the chance to show all her strengths yet – most notably “I have a firepit in my back yard.” Incredibly, having a fire pit and going on camping holidays wasn’t enough to convince the rest of Chani to keep her around, and Karla was the second person to be voted out of Survivor NZ.

Franky is not impressed by Karla’s fire pit.

Blindside Rating: 0/10

Karla had already seen the writing on the wall, and even said so in her exit interview.

Chisholm-ism of the week

“It’ll be like swimming in a hot bath.” How big is the bath in your house that you can swim in it, Mr. Moneybags?

Survivor NZ Quick Stats

3 – Visits from the medic this week

70 – Kilograms on Brad’s shoulders at the end of the immunity challenge

0 – Challenge wins so far for the Chani tribe

1 – Exposed rear end


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The cast and hapless host of this season of Dancing with the Stars.
The cast and hapless host of this season of Dancing with the Stars.

Pop CultureApril 29, 2018

The Dancing with the Stars NZ Power Rankings: The first seven

The cast and hapless host of this season of Dancing with the Stars.
The cast and hapless host of this season of Dancing with the Stars.

They challenge you to a dance-off. No trash talk, no back walk. Dance off. These are the power rankings for the first episode of highly anticipated celebrity-moving show, Dancing with the Stars NZ.

From its first moments, it was clear Dancing with the Stars NZ came here to play. They knew they had stars, they knew they had new judges, and they knew they had something to prove.

As for judges, there is Julz Tocker (from Wellington) who is the overenthusiastically complimentary one, Rachel White (from somewhere in America) who is the critical and slightly distant one and Camilla Sacre-Dallerup (from ???, I cannot place this accent) who is the nice-ish one with equal amounts of compliments and critiques like the banter you’d get from the local barista who sees you ten minutes later than usual.

The new judges cover the bases: Enthusiastic, Critical, Blonde.

But with little ado, I challenge you to a power ranking.

Gilda had it coming.

7. Gilda Kirkpatrick – Tango

Pop, six, squish, Cicero, Lipschiz. If you’re doing a tango, there are worse songs to do it to than the not-at-all tango song ‘Cell Block Tango’ from Chicago (there’s also a lot better, like an actual tango song). She brought full Housewife attitude to ‘Cell Block Tango’, one of the best songs in modern-ish musical theatre, and she seemed to absolutely play into both the song and her persona with this one, hi neck snap – she’s a housewife, she’s a killer one and she’s playing to stay around.

Gilda seems fun, and she proves herself to be a likeable presence outside of the dancing. And considering how much of Dancing with the Stars is made up of dancing as opposed to behind the scenes/interviews/judging/banter, that could bode well.

Dai Henwood banter: “Speaking of which, Real Housewives?”

SCORE: Eighteen.

Chris Harris upsetting people at his marketing job.

6. Chris Harris – The Cha cha

Former Black Hat Chris Harris is incredibly cute, and would do very well at your local RSA. As a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, he’s equally as likeable as your granddad doing a two-step on his local dancefloor-with-a-carvery and is clearly having as much of a ball. He seems like the absolute nicest person, but being the absolute nicest person does not necessarily make for a winner. It will, however, likely make the South Island vote for him. I called it here first: The South Island loves a smiler.

Dai Henwood banter: “Vanessa and the rooster!”

SCORE: Eighteen!

Sam Hayes, doing neither a fox nor a trot.

5. Sam Hayes – Non-Traditional Foxtrot (what the hell is that)

Sam Hayes did much better than her ill-fated promo, which is not hard to do. She looks great, despite her Fame-era arm-warmers, and she strikes a gorgeous pose doing a… foxtrot, which, now that I think of it, resembles neither a fox nor a trot. (Can you tell I have exactly zero dance training, and am thus extremely qualified to power-rank this celebrity-not-dropping competition?)

But yeah, she looks great, she seems stoked to have done well and also look great, and will likely go well based on how nice the judges are to her, and how much people seem to genuinely like Sam Hayes, which is a lot!

Dai Henwood banter: I missed this one, something about how dancing is harder than reading the news, and as someone who has no skill at either, I agree.

SCORE: Twenty-two.

Robert Rakete throws Nicole on the desk during the samba.

4. Robert Rakete – Samba

Robert Rakete came here to play and win. He has the narrative, he has the experience (via being the Brown Wiggle). He starts simple, has confidence, does well with a samba to Ed Sheeran’s ‘The Shape of You’, which is not something that should be samba’d to, but Dancing with the Stars flies in the face of sense and musicality. He nailed it though and captured our hearts, much like he captured the hearts of the mothers who likely watched him play the Wiggle.

Dai Henwood banter: “Look at the shape of you!”

SCORE: Seventeen! Which is frankly bullshit.

Shav Ruakere, apparently.

3. Shavaughn (Shav) Ruakere – Cha cha

My lord she looks great! I don’t mean to be shallow, because I’m not a particularly shallow person, but she looks amazing, bringing full Michelle Pfeiffer catsuit and Ariana Grande-last-era-high ponytail. And also, she’s a beautiful performer – and she brings the same charisma she brought to the TK-subduing Roimata and the gunge-subduing… Shavaughn, I guess, that she does to the cha cha. Well done, Shavaughn.

(I’m also on record on not being into this ‘Shav’ rebranding – I learned how to spell her name in the nineties and goddamn if I’m letting that work go to waste now that I’m being paid to write her name at least once a week.)

Dai Henwood banter: “You didn’t mention you were on C4 with me.”

SCORE: Twenty!

Jess Quinn, looking rightly stupendous.

2. Jess Quinn – Rumba

Jess goes hard for the rumba on ‘Faded’giving us full Drag Race-drama-face, and honestly, I think she’s a stealth favourite for this competition. She gave us a charismatic as hell performance, and she looks genuinely thrilled to be performing on this show. (Especially considering she was in A&E the night before, and I can barely watch this show having slept an entire night the day before and having done nothing except vaguely wander around the CBD today.)

I have zero shade to give Jess, she’s really fun to watch and legitimately charismatic. As someone who has never been influenced by a social media influencer, consider me influenced.

Dai Henwood banter: “Can I get a Jess, Quinn?”

SCORE: Twenty-three!

Marama Fox killing the jive.

1. Marama Fox – Jive

Marama calls her partner out straight away as being a skinny white guy, so we’re off to a very good start. Also they’ve got her doing the jive on her first week, so we’re off to an even better start.

And honestly? She kills it. There’s a reason why she’s on this show, and it’s because she’s charismatic as hell, people love her, people want to watch her, they want to listen to her, and it turns out if people want to watch and listen to you, then people will want to watch you dance. I don’t want to see her dance on this show, I want to see her dance in person.

Marama coming for ur man.

She’s the best. Team Marama, sorry, not at all sorry.

Dai Henwood banter: “Looks like Marama Fox is Marama Cougar now.”

SCORE: Seventeen, which is straight up bullshit.


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