Australian Survivor Report Card - Brains v Brawn 2 - Episode 24
Featuring best mates, torture, crying Kaelan and repeatability
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Previously on Australian Survivor: Myles took the immunity necklace, Australia took on The World and Zara took off
Best Mates
Grade: B
It’s the final episode of this season of Australian Survivor and we begin with a montage reminiscing about all the characters we lost along the way. Remember Kent? And Nash? And Max? Weren’t they awful wacky?
After that, it’s time for the immunity challenge, a classic game of Stand-on-Sticks. But before that, it is, of course, time to meet the loved ones of the players. After all, there’s nothing quite like having your most loved friends and family come to watch sick television producers (like, actual, criminally ill folk) inflict literal torture on you.
Myles and AJ turn out to have spiritually identical loved ones - best mates Nabil (AJ) and Ollie (Myles) with whom they share all their deepest thoughts about the game, receiving late night texts of the mad schemes they might undertake if they were ever on the show.
Boy, how jealous are Nabil and Ollie going to be after they watch the season and see the AJ-Myles relationship blossom?
“Who have you been texting your late night Survivor thoughts to, AJ? Who?! It’s that harlot, Myles, isn’t it? You promised that was a one-time on-island thing!”
Kaelan’s loved one, meanwhile, is, of course, a deep sea marlin.
Torture
Grade: F
Ha ha ha! No. Kaelan’s loved one is, in fact, his mother. As she wanders in to give her son a hug, Kaelan takes JLP aside and whispers ‘Don’t tell my mum I’m good at puzzles.’
JLP chuckles in that way he does, and instead reveals how the challenge will work. It’s the least sexy Twister variant ever (or perhaps… the most sexy?), with the players being told to move their bodies around at random intervals to increasingly uncomfortable foot-jabbing positions.
Myles is the first to succumb, after a couple of hours of torture, and, frankly, not much assistance from Ollie, who is called out on this by Nabil.
Would Myles have done better with his pole dance trainer as his loved one? Perhaps. Or perhaps Ollie is his pole dance trainer and you need to check your stereotypes at the door.
Anyway, after endless chat from AJ, who is doing everything he can to verbally win, from negotiating to scheming to peacocking to schmoozing Kaelan’s mum, he eventually runs out of puff and falls off the sticks.
Kaelan, sobbing, lifts up AJ, like Kevin Costner carrying Whitney Houston to safety in The Bodyguard, and the three boys hug it out.
Crying Kaelan
Grade: D-
Straight to tribal council, where Kaelan, still crying, has no idea who to vote out.
At first, AJ and Myles pitch why Kaelan should vote the other out, in the process also effectively making the other’s argument for winning the game.
“AJ has been a mastermind in this game, the dominant strategic force,” suggests Myles. “Every single person on that jury has said that if he makes it to the end, he deserves to win. You’d be mad to take him.”
“Au contraire!” responds AJ, leaning into French, as he so often does in a crisis. “Myles has broken six all-time Survivor records!”
He starts to enumerate those records, which is slightly problematic as he mostly just pulled the number six out of his butt. So around about the fifth one, he panics and goes with ‘played the most days on the bottom’ and ‘needed upside down junk blurring a record number of times’.
None of this appeases Kaelan, who is as confused and emotional as when he first arrived. Much like when Kate was crying a few episodes ago, the other two have no idea how to react in the face of such beautiful upsetedness, and so, ultimately just say ‘hey, it’s okay, Baby K, you vote for whatever your heart tells you’.
“Oh, in that case, AJ,” says Kaelan.
“Sacre bleu!”
Repeatability
Grade: C
To final tribal council then. Kaelan comes out of the gate strong, with an impressive speech that argues that his game is the most ‘repeatable’.
Myles counters by saying he played from the bottom like a jungle rat, and that he is a ‘merchant of chaos’. (This is a direct appeal to Logan, whose favourite Shakespeare play is The Merchant of Chaos.)
The two bounce back and forth, arguing their respective cases for being crowned sole survivor. Kaelan continually returns to his claim that his game is ‘repeatable’ - fittingly, his use of the word ‘repeatable’ is, itself, highly repeatable. Myles, meanwhile, points out how cool he’d look wearing a little crown.
They’re both good cases, but it’s eventually AJ who has the final say, mercilessly dismantling Kaelan’s argument for the win, and allowing Myles the crucial advantage of finishing with the stronger inspirational music.
Myles wins the final vote 7-1, and, in the process, wins me a buff from the good folk over at the Previously on Australian Survivor podcast.
Here’s the winning DM that I sent just before the season started, and before I’d learned a single player’s name:
And, hey, now that Australian Survivor is over, why not go listen to the Lost podcast that paved the way for that buff win. (Yes, yes. Also listen to the Previously on Australian Survivor podcast too. That goes without saying, surely.)
Lost Within Lost - Episode 1
It’s 20 years since the television show Lost first aired on Australian television. On the first episode of Lost Within Lost, the podcast where we’re re-rewatching the 10 best episodes of the show, we start with the 10th best episode, which is, fittingly, the pilot.
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