UK Survivor 2, Episode 7: Alpha Wail

Well we’re now halfway through Survivor and if you’ve managed to stick with it for this long, why not go out and purchase some official Survivor Panama merchandise? You can pretend to your friends that you’ve been roughing it in the rain on Bocas del Toro. Go to www.uksurvivorshop.com and you can obtain a coloured North or South tribe T-shirt for £11.99 (last seen being trampled in the mud upon merger), or a blue bucket hat for the same price (as not worn by anyone on the programme). Or, if you really want to spend big, you can buy the Survivor backpack for £29.50, but this will not apparently be shipped until the end of the series, perhaps because the contestants haven’t finished with them yet. Finally, for those on a budget, the Survivor mug is available at a mere £4.99, despite the fact that no tea or coffee is drunk on the island. Sadly the shop does not seem to be selling the John selection of crap hats, the Mark Nicholas necktie or the Bridget Union Jack underwear, which would probably be far more popular.

Bridget herself is reflective as she sits by the sea on the morning after tribal council, where she survived the vote by the skin of her teeth. The voting had made it clear that the old tribal loyalties were very much intact and that the ex-North Island members were uneasy. She is not wrong. Alastair, Dave, and Drew are mourning the demise of “little diamond” Helen. Alastair optimistically hopes that the ex-South Island members will stick to the ‘log agreement’ and vote against the weakest persons rather than on old tribal lines. Dave feels that everyone should forget their tribal past and start voting for individuals. Unfortunately these comments all sound like futile efforts at self-reassurance that their positions would not be weakened by their now numerical inferiority to the ex-South.

The suspicions prove justified, as the two Js, Susannah, and Bridget no longer talk of eliminating the weak but going for the jugular and voting off Alastair. John predicts that the loss of Alastair’s position of power may lead to a panic approach to Bridget to shore up his support. Susannah is positively gleeful that the Alastair clan has broken down and that “his pawn” Helen has gone. It is clear none of them trust the Big A at all and efforts by the man to persuade Susannah to encourage the other ex-South members to vote off Bridget fall on deaf ears. John remarks that his efforts to overcompensate for his new vulnerability had just made him more egocentric.

Today’s reward challenge is a spider hunt, much to the alarm of arachnophobes Dave and Drew. Dave suggests that everyone “closes their eyes and thinks of sex”, although it is difficult to visualise any sort of connection between sex and spiders, except in very twisted movies. The tribe is ferried to La Gruta or ‘The Batcave’, which they do not enter by sliding down a pole, but by tramping through a rocky stream. While negotiating the smell and noise of the hundreds of bats hanging from the roof, each person has to catch one of the many resident spiders at a time, bring it back out of the cave and deposit it in a jar. The person to capture the most spiders in 15 minutes wins.

The challenge begins. Dave, Bridget, and John’s spider senses are tingling and they soon storm ahead of the others in the hunt. Halfway through, however, Bridget crashes into a rock and cuts open her left knee, resulting in her having to retreat in agony for medical attention. The two guys take advantage, with John winning the challenge by capturing nine spiders to Dave’s eight. At the other end of the scale, Drew, Susannah, and Jonny all miserably fail to capture any at all, much to the particular embarrassment of the latter, who states that he would rather wrestle an alligator or fight Mike Tyson than touch a spider. I’m admittedly not an arachnophobe, but I do not comprehend how the prospect of being attacked by a huge, brutal, carnivorous beast could possibly have any greater appeal to Jonny; likewise wrestling the alligator.

John is rewarded by a night on the ‘nice’ side of the island with a slap-up meal of lobster and wine and a hot tub to relax in. He is allowed to take another member of the tribe with him and graciously chooses a now heavily bandaged Bridget, believing that he only won by default because of her injury. Bridget is very moved and gives us one of her regular bouts of tears. The others are very impressed by the gesture, which therefore has the added bonus of not doing John’s standing on the island any harm at all. Bridget and John then head off for their night of pampering.

Back in camp, the others make do with rice. Susannah remarks that Alastair was the only person to be unconcerned about Bridget’s plight, which, if it were possible, further lowers his standing with her. She also notices that Drew is cooking way too much of their limited supply of rice and ponders whether she is trying to deliberately trying to run it down in order to make things difficult for the others if she makes an early exit.

The next morning, it’s Birdkill II: Chicken Surprise. Alastair twists the hen’s head off while Drew grimaces behind the washing line. Dave meanwhile is spending time with Jonny and Susannah, supposedly to find out whether there is still a tribal rift, although there is presumably a strong element of self-preservation involved as he realises Alastair’s position is under severe threat and needs to cultivate support from elsewhere.

Suddenly, there is a very bizarre development. Drew suddenly declares that she has had enough of the island, wants to leave and states that, until she is voted off, she will no longer contribute anything to the tribe in order to bail out the others. Unlike Sarah and Meeta, who were both open with their reasons for wanting to leave prematurely, there is no explanation of this sudden change of heart whatsoever, particularly as she seemed to be coping well with the challenges up until now. She would not be able to go home immediately in any case, as she now has to do her post-eviction time on the jury, so one can only speculate on why she has developed such a dramatic aversion towards the competition and her tribemates. Perhaps it was the spiders, or the chicken carnage, or the loss of her bud Helen. However the sudden character metamorphosis from Quiet Drew to Evil Drew resembles the sort of feeble plotting that you usually only find in bad soap operas.

Not that Alastair has any complaints, as he realises that Drew wanting to leave would hopefully prolong his stay and he encourages her to tell the others of her views. As if the Big A wasn’t already being portrayed as unlikeable, we now get an on-screen trivia caption stating that his favourite politician is Margaret Thatcher. This is practically an act of treason in his home nation of Scotland and enough to encourage millions more viewers to shout very rude words at their television sets.

Today’s immunity challenge is an obstacle course, which each competitor has to negotiate wearing rucksacks filled with 1-kilo sandbags. Beforehand, each team member is asked three survival trivia questions and for every one that each gets correct, they are allowed to dump a sandbag onto someone else of their choosing. This exercise proves further that the old tribal loyalties are far from dead, as the ex-North members give their bags to John or Jonny and the ex-South to Alastair. They all end up with a 7, 8 or 9 kilo handicap while the others just have to cope with 2 or 3 kilos.

They then negotiate the course individually. Everyone is still very supportive of each other’s efforts despite the underlying tensions, especially Bridget, who, fighting against her injury, still manages to hobble around. However John, shrugging off his 7-kilo disadvantage, convincingly scores the quickest time and wins immunity, in the process further undermining the position of the ex-North Island members.

On the way back from the challenge, Drew reveals her plans to John. She wants him to persuade the others to vote her off at the next tribal council, otherwise she would destroy food, not contribute anything constructive to the camp and generally become the Bocas del Toro Bitch Queen from Hell, as well as voting against John in the final council. John tells the others, who are understandably shaken and horrified at these sudden threats of internal guerrilla warfare. The previous night’s rice incident, which Susannah had noted, suddenly made a lot more sense. Bridget and Susannah in particular are “gobsmacked” at this unforeseen threat to undermine the so-far civilised functioning of the tribe.

Alastair, the sly fox, meanwhile sees a way to turn this confrontation to his advantage. He suggests to Drew that they tell Bridget about the slagging that the two Js gave her while perched on the log, in the hope that it would break up the cosy ex-South unity and “reverse the game”.

Drew and Alastair are confronted by the rest of the tribe (minus Bridget, who is happily plucking the chicken) with suitable outrage from Dave and Susannah as to how Drew could contemplate sinking so low. Drew then attempts to add fuel to the flames by threatening to tell Bridget about John and Jonny’s ‘betrayal’ there and then. Perhaps she was hoping for some panic-stricken capitulation, but the reaction of the ex-South members was completely underwhelming. John and Jonny then smartly gamble on calling Bridget over and telling her what had been said on the log themselves and, unsurprisingly, Bridget was totally unfazed about it. Unlike Alastair who was annoyed that Drew had revealed his trump card at completely the wrong moment. Poker is obviously not her game.

Later Bridget reveals her anger to Susannah, but against Alastair’s expectations, it was directed back at the great man himself. Bridget remarks that, “it’s only a game” and cannot believe how nasty Alastair and Drew were getting about it all. Susannah comments on how Alastair was trying to speak for Drew during their confrontation and marks him down as a “snake in the grass” who had to be voted off as quickly as possible. John then astutely comments on how the most difficult part of life on the island was “surviving the people”.

Tribal council day brings a dilemma to the ex-South Island members. Should they vote Alastair off immediately and risk having to cope with a disgruntled Drew potentially sabotaging the camp for a further three days? Or would they let him stay to pose a physical and psychological threat, if he continued to stir up dissension? Alastair himself feels it is premature to assume that he would be going, “Where there’s breath, there’s hope”. John jokingly predicts that Alastair would find a spare immunity idol and use that to stay on the island.

Night falls and it is time for the tribal council eviction vote. In the end the ex-South members decide that the threat of Alastair conspiring behind their backs is greater than that of Drew pissing in the rice, or whichever other means of disruption she had in mind. All four therefore vote against him. The ex-North Island contingent prove that the targeting of the weakest agreement has now completely been blown out of the water by voting against Susannah, presumably seeing her as the most dangerous member of the South alliance, apart from the immune John. Their three votes however are not enough. Drew, much to her chagrin, now has to endure another three days in camp, although she may now end up being kept on a ball and chain to keep her away from the rice, the chicken or anything else that can be sabotaged. The threat of eviction has also totally swung away from Bridget for the time being, after coming so close to elimination at the last vote.

So Alastair goes back to his castle (yes, really) in philosophical mood. He was probably one of the most astute schemers on the island, but unfortunately all of his plans were struck down by circumstance. He had attempted from the start to avoid becoming the North Island leader, but was forced into the role because of the survival weaknesses of the others, thus making him an obvious potential target. Then, post-merger, when the North went into a minority and it became clear that the old tribal alliances were not going to break down that easily, his efforts to reinforce his position were muddied by Drew’s own agenda and hindered by his domineering personality. However he states that he “didn’t win a million, but didn’t lose it either” and he can now head back to his successful oil business, which I’m sure doesn’t leave him short of ready cash.

Next week: Bridget is smiling but nobody else seems to be. Drew is not popular. And neither is Susannah.

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