Survivor: Cook Islands- Survivor Live, Episode 7

It’s time for the eighth episode of the season of Survivor Live, CBS’s Internet interview show that features the most recently eliminated contestant from the previous night’s Survivor: Cook Islands episode. The show is usually co-hosted by Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly and Survivor: Amazon winner Jenna Morasca. This week, Jenna is away and Dalton shares the stage with guest-host Terry Deitz, from Survivor: Exile Island. This week’s guest is roller-gal Jessica Smith, also known as “Flica Flame.”

But first, my trivia question. Since Jessica was voted out primarily by her nickname of Flica, one is reminded of an earlier time when this did not play out so smoothly. In fact, Jeff Probst was unsure for whom the vote was cast. For the only time in Survivor history, a player had to verbally announce how they had voted at Tribal Council. Who cast that ill-fated (or, ill-conceived) vote, and for who? As usual, the answer will be near the bottom of this article.

The show begins with Dalton welcoming Terry to the show. When asked what he’s been doing, Terry tells us he appeared in a show called Fourteen Modern Marvels for the History Channel. He’s been involved with a fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Taking a short trip back to Survivor: Exile Island, Dalton asks Terry about the challenge he finally lost. Terry reminds us he’s a surfer and initially, he was sure this challenge was right up his alley. I remember Ms. Wigglesworth echoing similar sentiments on the initial season about a rowing event, and that didn’t work out quite as expected either.

Terry says his thoughts as he entered the water were, “There goes my million dollars!” But he’s proud of how things played out and doesn’t have regrets.

Returning to the current season, Dalton asks Terry if there’s a dominating performer this season like he was. He thinks Ozzy and Yul could dominate and adds that Parvati and Candice are very athletic. However, he also feels the challenges do not require as much athleticism as on his season.

Attention turns to Flica, now with bright purple-red-pink hair and a great big smile. She actually looks much cuter after getting cleaned up. The hair is tied into two side tails like it was in the second challenge last night, and blue and golden bits of material are also incorporated in there. Have a look at the picture that accompanies this article for a visual.

Dalton says that most of the season it seemed as though Flica was just here for the experience. Last night, she seemed to be working harder in the game. Flica speaks to a slightly different point as she admits she saw the merge as a second chance and relates that the original tribe never let her forget the chicken incident. Her explanation is that she never knew they were under the crate.

Flica says things didn’t sit well between her and Jonathan. “I was talked down to all the time. It was like creepy-old-man syndrome to me.” She calls him two-faced and says he claimed she was in his back pocket and that he could make her do what he wanted. Dalton explains to her that Jonathan plays hard and obvious.

Flica says she didn’t feel comfortable sleeping next to Candice and Adam, and then Parvati was trying to get in on it. Meanwhile, she was next to Jonathan and then ended up sleeping separately a lot. She confirms for Dalton that Jonathan was not her cuddle buddy and says he made her feel uncomfortable. That doesn’t get detailed. She made sure that when she did sleep with the pack, she was sleeping on the other side from Jonathan.

At the merge, Flica hoped she would end up on the other team with “the hunky guys.”

Our first caller is young Allie from Kansas City. She’s not playing hooky, there are teacher conferences today. She wants to know why the gals didn’t align and vote Jonathan off. Flica felt the girls “were boring” and almost never left camp or tried to make camp better. She says it was frustrating for her.

Dalton brings up the boat ride to the Raro camp. He notes that five chose not to go and asks if they were lazy, or strategically just not wanting to associate with them. She didn’t think of that angle, she just thought the idea seemed like fun. She insists there was no alliance among the three. She adds that she only thought about voting when a Tribal Council came up. Yes, that’s what she said!

Terry asks if anyone on Aitu seemed happy to see them. Flica says it was friendlier than how it played in TV and adds that Cao Boi was not doing all the talking. Dalton tries to prompt Terry into saying he wouldn’t have wanted the other tribe to visit. He doesn’t bite and responds, “You never know what you can glean.”

Flica says they didn’t know it was the other tribe’s island. They thought it was the old Puka island, where they knew they could get bananas, mangos and cocoanuts. She reveals that they were told they couldn’t go to other islands, but this one was okay. “Ah, you were set up!” exclaims Dalton.

The clip of Candice comparing the potential boot candidates is run. At this point it does seem like Jonathan is the one going home, but Sundra’s comment about Flica, “She’s like a mosquito that won’t die,” that’s pretty telling.

Dalton wonders where Yul’s glasses came from. Flica thinks he lost his contacts, but she’s not positive.

Dalton asks how much of her game was strategy and how much was “just trying to save her ass.” Flica says she wanted Jonathan out for a long time but others wanted Princess Becky out. Dalton asks Terry who he thought was going home. He says first Ozzy, then Jonathan. Terry adds that perhaps everyone doesn’t feel as strongly as Flica, but even in his own alliance Jonathan isn’t trusted.

Dalton says he isn’t seeing this creepy vibe. Flica says Yul may want Jonathan around because of his strength. She sees Ozzy as more valuable because of the food her provides. She adds that he’s a kind person. She admits to being surprised that Ozzy threw a challenge earlier in the season. Terry sees that as “his only wrong move so far” and knows that the food Ozzy is bringing in is critical to the tribe.

The second segment begins with Dalton asking Flica if she ever got to the point where she didn’t want to still be in the game. No. She says she doesn’t usually let people get to her that seriously. She still felt she was an asset to her tribe, wasn’t threatening, and enjoyed being out there.

Dalton says that pre-game, Flica said she was going to bring some “Roller Derby vibe” to Survivor and runs the clip of her talking some smack in the one challenge. Asked if she was serious, she says, “I was just being silly,” and, “Would you take something like that seriously? Come on now!”

Terry says he thought she would hold on longer. She admits that when she let her arm extend, she was done. Terry says that in a lot of the challenges, if you can find the right technique quickly, it makes it a lot easier.

Flica claims Parvati made an apparently invalid move, pulling the rope down using her entire body weight and not just her arm. Perhaps she should have been issued an “SPW” (“Stiff Probst Warning”), which seems to be the only penalty one gets for breaking the rules in a challenge this season.

Dalton says, if you’d had an arm free, you could have thrown the red challenge flag. Flica responds, “If I could get an elbow free, I’d have thrown her a roller derby elbow!”

The phone lines are messed up so a clip of the immunity challenge clip is run. The challenge was appropriately titled, “Stairway to Heaven”. While were at it, the similar reward challenge was called “Smash and Grab.” I’m not sure why people felt all that excessive motion would make them traverse a zip-line faster and Probst sure gave Parvati a hard time about walking instead of swimming, but at any rate this clip shows Raro’s dramatic come-from-behind victory.

Dalton asks what happened with the puzzle. Flica thought the other gals lost the challenge on purpose. She claims she was handing them the right pieces and Sundra and Becky kept handing them back to her. Back at camp, she confronted them and the girls said, “Really?” and claimed they were not aware that had happened.

The hosts are not sure, though Dalton wonders if Ozzy got to them. I suggest that if she wants to seek conspiracies, consider Jonathan so readily volunteering to sit out the challenge.

Dalton notes that on the other side, Brad caught a lot of flack from Nate for sitting out swimming stage in the reward challenge, yet Adam sat out swimming in the immunity challenge and that was not seen as an issue. It could be that Brad, Nate and Parvati are all superior swimmers to Adam, who was pressed into service when Nate was unavailable. Terry notes that Adam wasn’t doing much in the way of puzzle-solving either, but Jenny seemed to have an epiphany and he wasn’t needed.

Phone problems have been fixed and we finally hear from Don in Toronto. He calls Flica “honestly, a decent person, a really sweet person.” Don asks if she knew she was the one going home, because she didn’t seem upset at going.

Flica relates that she couldn’t get an honest answer from anyone when she tried to talk about the vote beforehand. She adds that even the ones she saw as her friends didn’t tell her, and she would have wanted to know. Dalton points out that you can’t spill the beans in this game or else things will flip around on you. When she did get an answer, it was Jonathan’s name that came up.

Chris from New Jersey is the next caller. He asks why Nate was chosen to be the one kidnapped in the previous Tribal Council. She says they knew he was strong in their tribe, and well liked. Conversely, she describes Adam as not as well liked and aggressive.

Terry suggests that maybe they saw that the women were going to vote off a guy and by removing Nate, this would force them to make a quick decision. This makes minimal sense to me, but Flica agrees in a manner so unconvincing that you know that either the idea is completely foreign to her, or she just didn’t understand it. So forget that one.

Dalton suggests perhaps it was to keep Nate out of the next reward challenge. I’m pretty sure she is again agreeing to a false reason. She then reveals that Candice and Jonathan wanted to pick Adam, but she didn’t want them to reconnect.

Okay, THAT one I buy. But the real answer is, she wasn’t part of the strategic plan behind the choice of Nate, and we must wait for another Aitu to appear on this show before we get the real story.

Flica did not compete in the reward challenge and she admits to rooting for hard-working Adam, and also Rebecca with her top off and too tired to fix it. Actually, she can’t even remember Rebecca’s name and Dalton has to provide it! Terry notes that Parvati swam very well in that challenge. Flica wants to box against her.

Eric from Atlanta compares Flica to Jennifer Tilly and Cyndi Lauper. He asks what she’s doing now. Well, go to Flicaflame.com for the details! She still fire dances on stilts and designs costumes. She also wants to set up challenges, video tape them and post them at YouTube. She’s been taking boxing lessons to get ready to challenge Parvati.

The nickname of Flica comes from rhyming with the Bic lighter; apparently she used to use a Bic to light up her equipment back in 2000, and it stuck with her.

Dalton next introduces “Probst’s Thoughts,” where Jeff Probst records a message to the departing player. Jeff calls her, “One of the most colorful and likable people on the show this season. She was frustrating to some because she wasn’t as into the game as others were.” She approached it as an adventure, and wouldn’t be bullied into voting. He adds that she is most likely to be remembered for losing the chickens and ends with, “Jessica, you were a delight.” He hopes she’ll be on a future edition of the show. Hmm! All-Stars #2?

She clarifies that there were, in fact, three chickens initially, and it was Candice who let the first one out. That wasn’t caught on camera, though. She also tells us no one ever caught a chicken on that island, but there were about a dozen hanging around and interrupting their sleep. However, on her (second) island, they caught all but one of the wild chickens.

Dalton reminds us Flica was a vegetarian pre-game. “And I’ve been eating chicken EVER since,” she says, adding jokingly that, “I got a personal vendetta against those chickens!”

The third segment always begins with the “minus 10” feature, where Dalton reads ten rapid-fire categories for Flica to comment on, each in less than ten words. Here’s how it went:

• Roller Derby – fun, aggressive, full contact women’s sport
• Puzzles – not my favorite thing
• Jonathan – could have been better without him
• Burning Man – gotta love it, you should go
• Eating Meat – didn’t like it but now I have been
• Mosquitoes – (no answer)
• Tattoos – beautiful cool reed tattoo on my back from Australia
• Tribal Council – not my favorite place to go
• Cao Boi – positive role model in a lot of peoples eyes
• Talking Smack – gotta do it, it’s just fun, good sense of humor

Good job, Flica!

Patty from Philadelphia asks if she is still friends with Ozzy. Flica hopes they will remain friends but so far they are not permitted to communicate. She does have a bond with Cao Boi and Cece, though.

Dalton asks Terry who from his Exile Island season he keeps in touch with. He says, “Shane, Austin, and Nick, and a little bit of Sally.” He relates that although they were shown butting heads on the show, he and Shane talked about family and life while they were off snailing or spear fishing together, but it was never shown. He’s met Shane’s wife and son, Bird and Boston.

With Aras he has less contact. Aras has his own business and is busy setting up charity events involving basketball camps for kids.

Dalton wonders if Flica will remain in contact with Jonathan. Maybe so! She says she’s put it behind her and isn’t judgmental, and maybe Jonathan was just acting too much. She says, “I realize it’s just a game.”

Dalton runs my favorite clip, Candice and Flica kissing. Dalton likes that girl-on-girl action. Flica suggests the sugar rush may have temporarily taken them over.

The next caller is Trish (Terry’s wife), who pretends to ask him out on a date. She tells him, “You’re not Italian, stop using the hands!” A clip of Trish’s visit from last season is run and Flica says, “That’s real love, right there.”

April, who is also from Philadelphia, asks if there was any hint of a secret alliance between Nate and Ozzy. She suspects there is, because she read in the bios that they went to the same college. Flica adds that Cao Boi and Adam also went to the same school and Dalton adds, so did he and Jonathan.

Dalton says that in the pre-game time, Nate and Ozzy didn’t even speak together. Flica relates that Sundra was with Nate all the time he was in their camp, so there was no chance of a secret meeting then. Dalton knows caller April is crushed that her theory seems to have fallen apart.

Dalton has Terry ask Jenna Morasca’s “Question of the Week.” Dalton wonders if Jenna shared any of her thoughts about the question with Terry. Terry says, “First of all, Jenna has thoughts.” Dalton laughs.

Since Flica already told a caller what she’s doing these days, he’s going to have to improvise. Terry says on his season, they talked about coffee a lot and asks Flica what food they talked about the most. She says chocolate was the big topic, and that talk started about two days into the game.

The final piece of business is running the CBS promo. Brad loses Raro’s trust and a surprise twist could change everything.

Dalton says that last week he said Flica was doing well and Brad too, but now Flica is here and Brad’s stock is falling.

Terry remembers Nick and Dan. However, they didn’t get mad at Nick. He notes that Nate got on Brad’s back as soon as they got back to camp. Dalton wonders if that decision was discussed before the challenge.

Alas, that’s the end. Dalton give props to Terry and Flica’s million-dollar smile. No one dances as the rocking theme ends the show. Terry did Ok as

CBS Website Clues:

• A major twist at the Reward Challenge results in betrayal and leaves one tribe stunned. How will this turn of events affect the Survivors' morale?
• Banished to Exile Island, one Survivor worries about being away from the tribe at a critical bonding time.
• One Survivor desperately tries to fit in with their tribe, but suddenly finds out they're on the outside.
• One tribe bonds over sharing mementos from home while the other struggles to find common ground.

And, this just in from the department of things I do not understand… guess who is the leader is in CBS’s Popularity Poll. Yul? Nope, he’s second. Parvati? No, she’s now third. It’s Candice!

Finally, once again, the show is improperly posted on CBS’s Innertube. Almost all of the first segment and the last half of the third are missing. I had to depend on my memory and generalize the concepts expressed. Hopefully nothing too important was missed.

Trivia Answer:

This week’s question was about players voted out by their nickname. Unfortunately for Clay of Survivor: Thailand, the name “Denver Diva” was not known to Probst (or most anyone else). He had to verbally own up to his vote for Ghandia in front of everyone at Tribal Council. Additionally, Probst then chastised Clay for trying to be a smart-ass!

In Conclusion:

Flica is an interesting person, but as a player of this game – forget it! Recruited players with zero knowledge of the show make for bad strategy, uninformative interviews, and boring seasons. Alas, Flica will not be the last.

Everyone is invited to share his or her opinions at the eAddress below. I’ll be back next week to report on another Survivor Live interview. Rumors are that there will actually be guests next week!

Brian lives in Toronto where he can be reached at Uncle_bto@rogers.com. He’d like to hear your opinions and promises to respond to all serious email!

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