UK Survivor 2, Episode 6: Logging Off

After several days of torrential rain, the sun has finally come out over Bocas del Toro. It’s a beautiful day for anyone to be on a tropical island. Well anyone apart from the Columbus tribe cockerel. It’s breakfast time, the tribe are hungry and poultry is on the menu. Forget Survivor, it’s time for something much more horrific; Birdkill (rated R).

Bridget is still far from the most popular member of the merged tribe, but there is no doubting her aptitude for the slaughter of live animals. She offers to carry out the foul (or fowl?) deed, assisted by Alastair. Drew however is concerned and suggests that the act is carried out away from the hens, so as not to traumatise them. Bridget treats this suggestion with her usual disdain for agricultural amateurs, but reluctantly goes along with it. Perhaps counselling is necessary, both for the hens and for Bridget. Anyway the head is removed and the carcass strung up by Bridget, with a condom placed over its bloody neck. Well, let’s face it, there is no better place for a condom than on the end of a cock.

The others are cleansing themselves in readiness for the new day. Susannah has found an additional use for the copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare that she won in the last reward challenge. Some of the pages are now being used as toilet paper, although she is being selective, “Only the crap plays – not the sonnets”. Have five hundred years of literary history really come to this? As Hamlet would probably not say, “To pee, or not to pee, that is the question”. Words that will come back to haunt Susannah later.

Meanwhile the guys are bathing and washing each other’s hair. Alastair however is coming under attack. Susannah nominates him as a key target, as he holds the grouping with Drew and Helen together and his removal would make the ex-North Island members easier to pick off. Dave has noticed that the big A is now holding back from leadership and letting the two Js take on a lot more. He is convinced Alastair has a plan, though it’s obviously not a very good one if the others have worked it out already.

Today’s reward challenge is called Broken Spears and is a variation of tic tac toe, whereby two competitors try and eliminate each other off a big marked board by breaking their wooden spear, or not, if one could argue their way out of it. No, I didn’t understand it either, but Drew won and got some cutlery and a tin of peaches for her pains.

Anyway the tribe soon revert to simpler pursuits, Bridget-baiting. She argues with Drew about whether they should eat the skin removed from the cockerel’s carcass and then reprimands the guys for cutting down saplings for the fire instead of using older dead wood. Her former South Island colleagues are not pleased. “She should keep her gob shut for two more days,” says John. Although there is no great regard among the ‘professional alliance’ for Bridget, they know that her removal at the next tribal council would leave them all vulnerable to being picked off by the ex-North Island members and so Jonny and Susannah agree to speak to her and defuse the situation. They collar Bridget later and suggest that she holds her tongue and apologises to Drew for her temper. Bridget haughtily claims that she does not feel that she has done anything to apologise for, but outnumbered, agrees to make a ‘political’ apology. Bridget and Susannah then give each other a very insincere hug.

The next morning, Bridget somewhat confusingly apologises to Helen and the two then sit around discussing their homesickness and scratching their legs. After being despised by most of the tribe and feared by the poultry, Bridget now appears to have found one friend on the island.

News of the immunity challenge comes through and the tribe are excited to find out that it will be the legendary log stand. This event in the first UK series of Survivor brought us the sheer insanity of Andy’s 23-hour stand-off and the two Js look forward to trying to emulate this. Alastair cagily retreats to the shelter to conserve his energy, which does not go down well with the others. Even less popular is his threat to take a dump on the log if nature called. Susannah threatens to push him off if he did and states that she could not ever envisage discharging in public.

The tribe head out to the raised horizontal log, erected in the bay. Mark sits at a table in a nearby shelter and offers them all a hot shark and seafood lunch (or dinner, or maybe even breakfast) and beer when they come off. All eight climb on shakily and the challenge starts at 2.30 p.m. Here is a log (sorry) of progress.

31 minutes. Alastair puts on his shirt while sharing a joke with Dave. The log wobbles and Dave crashes off. He is not too perturbed as he is first to the beer.

1 hour 25 minutes. Drew has had enough and climbs off, giving us a nice boob shot in the process.

5 hours. Night has fallen and a large moon shines on the remaining six. Bridget and Helen give a demonstration of ‘girl power’ and start jigging about, to the annoyance of the others. Bridget then says that she did not see the point in staying on the log as she felt that she would not be a target for eviction and she and Helen then jump off to have dinner together.

Bridget’s statement infuriates the others, especially her former tribal colleagues. John is unhappy with her assumption that the weaker competitors would benefit if the strongest ones were to be eliminated first. Susannah does not find her view morally palatable and adds that she would be “gutted” if Bridget now ended up winning. Yes, but people, the whole point of Survivor is that it is not necessarily the strongest competitor that does win; luck and sheer deviousness also have a great deal to do with it. Not that Bridget possesses any of the latter. John is meanwhile so enraged that he does a moony to the camera.

9 hours. Here is a moment of British TV history. For the first time ever on prime time television (as far as I’m aware), there is a shot of a woman urinating whilst standing up (apart from a similar scene in The Full Monty, but that was presumably faked). And not a pixel to be seen. Thank you Susannah; what were you saying earlier about bodily functions in public? She claims in defence that she had been holding it in for four hours. The fearless foursome (all by now wearing very silly hats) then discuss how they might come across on TV, decide that everyone would think Bridget was “SO BORING” and then all laugh maniacally. The insanity is setting in!

12 hours. Jonny is getting excited about the prospect of beating Andy’s record. Susannah has a more modest ambition: to stay for the sun rise.

14 hours. Everyone’s toes are starting to swell nastily.

16 hours. Dawn breaks and it starts to rain. Everyone scrambles into macs.

17 hours. Susannah decides to call it a night and climbs off. And then there were three. But none of them are in the mood to go anywhere.

20 hours. The rain has stopped and temperatures soar into the nineties. But the three amigos stand around coolly in hats and shades. They have suddenly remembered that it is tribal council later that day and discuss tactics. Funnily enough, staying on the log until it is all over is not one of them. Taking Bridget’s reasoning to heart, both Alastair and the two Js agree to try and persuade their former tribe members to vote against the perceived weakest one (Helen and Bridget respectively) that night, so as to safeguard the position of the stronger members. John rather unwisely adds that he didn’t mind being voted off eventually, as long as he got some notice first. Bad move John!

22 hours. John tells the story of his Marines passing out inspection by none other than Prince Philip. He exchanged the usual royal visitor pleasantries to everyone else, then stepped up to John and asked “Isn’t there a [minimum] height limit in the Marines?” Well done Philip; after insulting most of the world at one time or another, why not turn on our servicemen as well.

23 hours. Jonny complains about his lack of erections on the island (yes, the conversation is now starting to get very desperate). John replies that he has only had the one so far, when Jonny was washing his hair. He had seen Bridget topless, but this had done nothing for him. Now there’s a surprise.

24 hours. Hooray! Andy’s record has been broken. And with that, the three have decided that they have had enough. They make an agreement to persuade their ex-tribemates not to vote against any of them that night and allow Jonny to stay on a bit longer to claim immunity and, perhaps more importantly to him, the ultimate record. Alastair and John then dive off.

24 hours 6 minutes. Jonny jumps off the log, swims to shore and strolls in nonchalantly for lunch. It’s all over!

Jonny is chuffed to discover that his time on the log is a Survivor world record. Susannah’s 17 hours is similarly a women’s record. At last Britain has found a sport in which we are worldbeaters. Bring logstanding into the 2004 Olympics quickly!

Back in camp, everyone else is going about their normal food-finding business. Bridget asks Helen if she could let her know whether she (Helen) was going to vote Bridget off that night. Helen promises that she wouldn’t be voting against her. We’ll see!

The fearless three return to a hero’s welcome, but as tribal council is only two hours away, there is little time for basking in glory, as Alastair and the two Js explain their agreed strategy of voting against the weakest member of the other former tribe. There does not appear to be any dissension to this plan, although Alastair is trying to keep a step ahead and is optimistic that some of the ex-South Island members might vote against Bridget too, disposing of her and giving the ex-North Island the upper hand. He makes it clear however that he would not vote against the two Js out of respect for their time on the log, and the two also say the same about Alastair. Time will tell whether this cross-tribe ‘log alliance’ turns into something more permanent.

It is now tribal council and the votes are cast. Not one person dares deviate from the agreed strategy and so the four ex-North Island members vote against Bridget and the four ex-South Island members against Helen (despite the latter’s previous promise to Bridget). This results in the first invocation of a new Survivor rule; the right of appeal. Both nominees are allowed to address the council to say why they should be allowed to stay before a revote was taken. Both Bridget and Helen give quick off the cuff speeches, which have no effect on the new vote at all. Therefore both take part in a further tiebreak.

A mudwrestle or some other form of physical conflict for supremacy would have been quite entertaining, but instead both are asked questions about survival and the first person to reply wrongly was out (which is a horrible and totally unsatisfactory way to eliminate anyone from the island). Both answer the first question correctly, but Helen gets the second one wrong, although it was a particularly obscure one about the properties of the bark of the quinine tree, which would be in the big money echelons of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire scale, without any lifeline or 50/50 to help. So sadly it is farewell to Helen (although she is not going far as she now becomes the first member of the final jury) and Bridget, against all the odds and expectations, survives. She looks extremely relieved, as presumably are the rest of the ex-South Island members, who now have ascendancy if the existing old tribal alliances stay as they are (although the new bonding between those on the log does not make this certain).

Helen meanwhile is content to accept her fate and says that she was more than happy to get as far as she did. Eventually she would go home to her mother, who was currently unaware that she was on Survivor (Helen had told her that she was in Poland!) to be interrogated about her experiences, whilst being fed up to put her lost weight back on. At least any chicken would be pre-slaughtered this time.

Next week: The poultry massacre continues. When ants attack. And someone has a novel Survivor strategy: try and poison the other contestants!

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