Australian Survivor Report Card - Brains v Brawn 2 - Episode 22
Featuring losing the flint, perfect plans and zooking it
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Previously on Australian Survivor: Kaelan won immunity, Kate won immunity and Morgan did not
Losing The Flint
Grade: D
And so we enter the endgame. A braidless endgame, with people’s hair no longer privy to the tress-twisting fingers of Kristin. But while we’re braidless, we’re not brainless. Or, indeed, Brains-less, with only Kate remaining from the original Brawn tribe.
One of the remaining Brains (Myles) has a plan. He tries to tell Zara about it, but is distracted by a lost flint. He scurries around the jungle for ages looking for it, but can only find three idols instead. Frustrating.
So he gives up on that and tells Zara his dastardly plan, which is as simple as it is game-changing. Namely, he and Zara will blindside AJ at this round five vote when everybody will be expecting either a simple Kate elimination (an elimiKation) or a Kaelan culling (a Kaeulling). Look, the wordplay doesn’t quite work, but the plan is otherwise sound.
Indeed, the only annoying thing about the plan is that it’s announced way too early in the episode for something so deliciously mischievous to actually happen.
Perfect Plans
Grade: B+
Time for an immunity challenge, a classic game of Untimed Totter Tower, using the leftover blocks from the impromptu Tribal Council immunity challenge the night before.
Despite Kaelan’s excellent World Timed Totter Tower Rankings, he is much less proficient at the Untimed variant of the game (ranked a mere 36 in the world!), and so ultimately Zara wins the challenge, which sets her and Myles up perfectly for the AJ blindside.
He explains it clearly for those of us at home who are too busy scrolling social media to have thought it properly through:
‘Zara is immune. I will play my idol. It then doesn’t matter where the other three place their votes - the maximum active votes they can put on anybody is two (because none of them can vote for themselves). Which means if Zara and I vote for AJ, at worst it’s a tie, and on the revote (where AJ and whoever else is tied aren’t voting), the two of us will have the numbers to eliminate AJ.’
It’s a perfectly constructed plan from Myles. Utterly flawless. But again outlined so early in the episode that the rest of the running time was spent wondering what in blue blazes he would switch it to at the last second.
Zooking It
Grade: C-
Or would he? Because the rest of the episode is filled with AJ saying delicious things such as ‘If Kaelan goes home, my game is over’, and Myles expressing sadness that he has to turn on AJ. But at no point does it seem as if he’ll waver from his plan.
Heck, at one point, he even explains the move via an elaborate poker analogy, which is the true AJ blindside.
Aha! But here’s the fly in the wrinkle. Because suddenly Zara does the calculations and realises that each of the other four are voting for a different person for various reasons (ie split votes, blindside gameplay and being uncertain about how to spell ‘Kaelan’). Which means that her vote is decisive.
So, of course, she votes for, uh, Kate, sending her to the (Morganless) jury. And the Post-Graduates stick together to final four in the messiest possible way.
If Cara cooked it in the original Brains v Brawn season, I guess that means Zara zooked it here?
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