(The opinions expressed in the following are mine and not necessarily those of anyone else, although in some cases they should be and probably are)
And we are back with what is remember as the height of Survivor in terms of pop culture relevance and popularity. This was the big one. I wasn't watching at the time, I was 8, in the third grade and didn't really have an interest in shows like Survivor. I was still just a kid, watching Digimon and Power Rangers. That said though, I heard all kinds of things about this show. I knew the names Colby, Kieth and Tina without ever havign watched a single second of the show. The day after Tina won there was an article in my local news paper about it. Not kidding. Survivor was everywhere.
Looking back with 2013 eyes though, this season kind of sucks. Yeah, I said it. Survivor: The Australian Outback is a crappy season in terms of Survivor game-play. There is a reason for this, and that reason is caused by one of the better parts of the show. This season more than any other had things happen that made the title 'Survivor' actually relevant. The flood the forest fire, the running out of food, the accident, all of these made the experience a true survival test, but it also made everyone fold like a cheap lawn chair when it came to the strategy. I'll explain more once the merge passes, because there's a lot of pre merge stuff to talk about.
The show starts on a plane, people are heaving, Probst is being Probsts and our castaway are dumped and left to hike to camp. This is one thing we hardly see anymore on Survivor, an situation that immediately puts people at odds over something so simple. Right off the bat, Debb has issues with Kimmi, Nick gets Kucha lost, Kieth ditches his tribe ect. We instantly have drama. Nowadays the producers are like 'heres your camp! the idol is under that tree. BRB GOTTA GO SET UP REDEMPTION ISLAND!!!' The hike to camp is something that needs to come back.
Ogakor instantly has shelter because Colby pulled a fast one with his luxury item. He listed it as a Texas flag. he wasn't lying, he just didn't mention that it was 8x12 and had metal grommets in it. Well played, but kind of cheating. Although this was back in the days where the contestants were given a shit load of supplies, so the flag, while giving an extra bit of shelter, did out ogakor was at 12 while kucha was at maybe a 10. If the survivors weren't given so many supplies, the flag might have been a bigger deal, but in the end it didn't matter. Second best luxury item ever. (The first was in Heroes vs Villains and it was James' unused hidden immunity idol from Survivor China)
Neither tribe gets fire, Ogakor wins immunity and matches, Debb gets voted out. (Not saying anything else about Debb)
The next morning in episode 2 we see the first example of something that wasn't clear to me until i rewatched this after seeing him again on Survivor Philippines and that is that Michael Skupin is AWFUL at the social aspects of Survivor. He has absolutely zero sense of self awareness, he always thinks he is in the best possible spot, and that the people who disagree with him are wrong. Why this guy was so talked about in terms of returning players is beyond me. He sucked. If he had never fallen in the fire he would have been completely forgotten. If they had never done Survivor: Injured Old Guys, I doubt he would have ever come back. The first of three returning players from this season that just make me shake my head.
The other 2? Alicia and Amber. I'll get into both more as time goes on, but in the first 5 episodes, neither does anything to warrant a second shot. Amber just says "Oh my gooooooood, its sooooooooo gooooood" like 40 million times and Alicia does her whole head bob-finger wave thing at Kimmi. Two of the '18 best Survivors' on the first 7 seasons people.
Beef Jerky. Yeah, I'm going to talk about this. There's two things worth mentioning. 1. I doubt he actually had beef jerky. 2. Kel handled that whole thing in the absolute worst way possible. That situation was so easily solvable. there's a bunch of different things the guy could have done to explain whatever it was he was doing. Grab a stick, put it in your mouth, walk back to camp, calmly and casually mention how you miss your smokes. Do not mention that you overheard the beef jerky talk, play it cool. I get that the dude was pissed about being accused of something, but he handle it wrong, and I think it caused him to become more of a loner and get himself voted out. That said, even if that situation hadn't occurred, he was a sitting duck since he was so anti social, but this did lead the way for Jerri to become the villain she became.
Maralyn, while entertaining and fun, fell victim to the classic older person weak in challenges curse. Oh well. The only good that came from her boot episode was Jerri alienating Tina and Kieth. The start of the next episode is awesome. Kieth and Tina go fishing and come up with a plan to try and fight back. They need Colby on there side. Jerri had the hots for Colby. Whether Colby had to hots for her, that's a little harder to determine. But through Tina and Kieth's constant talking ill of her, and Jerri stratigizing to the point of annoying him, Colby did end up flipping and voting for Mitchell because he was so weak.
Episode 5 is memorable in my mind because of the unfair immunity challenge, Kucha was forced to have all 7 members in the maze, this made it harder for there to move as a group. Whether or not this made a difference I'm not sure, since Roger and Kimmi sat out the reward they were in regardless and they seemed to be weaker challenge competitors. Either way, that challenge was unfair in that regard. But Colby's pre challenge speech lead to a victory for the dwindling green tribe, and Kimmi was voted out. Her vote for Jeff was not read, and this will be discussed next time.
The season up until this point was very fun and light hearted. Kucha was winning a majority of the challenges, and were largely the happy go lucky baby faces. Jeff was doing a little bit of scheming on the side with Alicia, and we can only wonder how it would have played out if the events of the next episode had not occurred. But we'll talk about that next time.
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