Australian Survivor Report Card - Titans v Rebels - Episode 22
Featuring parallel universes, bogus numbers and feigning indecision
Previously on Australian Survivor: Kitty was passive aggressive, Mark’s tongs were steady but not steady enough and Caroline’s plans were fatally flawed.
Here’s the report card for the twenty-second episode of Titans v Rebels
Parallel Universes
Grade: C+
Mark and Caroline chat in the aftermath of her botched idol play at the previous tribal council.
“You should have told me,” says Mark, as they head back to camp. “Thank you, though,” he adds.
What a useful phrase ‘you should have told me, thank you, though’ is. So versatile. You can use it at a surprise birthday party. Or when a person you’re casually dating proposes to you in public. Or when your partner buys you tickets to a performance of Two and a Half Men: The Musical. A phrase to keep in your pocket.
Another useful thing to keep in your pocket is a hidden immunity idol. So after Mark and Caroline are finished moping about how doomed they are, they head off to find one. But Feras is approximately seven to nine steps ahead of them. He’s repackaged his immunity idol and sent Raymond out to the jungle to ‘find’ it in front of them, which he gleefully does.
Raymond is playing an entire parallel universe version of Survivor. I love that for him.
Bogus Numbers
Grade: D
We return to ominous close-up footage of a ball rolling down a metallic chute, setting the scene for this episode’s immunity challenge.
Yes, it’s a game of Solitaire Ladder PingPong! A Survivor classic.
Feras has a strategy of counting the seconds each ball takes and attempting to integrate new balls into the sequence that way. Kirby has a strategy of dropping balls in way too soon after one another and hoping her professional hand-eye co-ordination compensates for her sloppy timing. Raymond’s strategy? Just trusting everything will work out okay if he remains an optimistic cherub. Caroline’s? She yells out bogus numbers to try to distract Feras. Like pi or infinity minus one or eleventeen. (I’m not sure she actually did this, but she must surely have been tempted.)
And Mark’s strategy? Mark’s strategy is to reveal that the diplomacy thing had been a sham all along and his true Titan power was being a Titan of Ball Management.
Which is enough for him to win immunity.
Feigning Indecision
Grade: D-
And now suddenly Kirby is the one in trouble. Mark takes Feras aside and says ‘hey, probably time to get rid of Kirbs, huh?’. Raymond, lounging in a hammock, gives a cheery thumbs up to this plan.
Feras is torn by the decision. He consults with Kirby, who suggests that Feras should just play his idol for her.
“Huh,” lies Feras. “I never thought of that. Whoa. Huh. Boy, that’s an idea for sure, and no mistake. Let me think on that. Wow. Who’da thunk it? Yeah. Huh.” And so on and so forth.
Kirby explains further the downsides of him not going through with this plan, and how if they vote her out this round, he’ll go next, then Raymond, leaving Caroline and Mark in the final two. “When you win, I win,” she concludes. “When I win, you win, right?”
Feras nods sadly at this, unable to bring himself to tell Kirby about the entire concept of the ‘sole Survivor’ that has underpinned the show from the very beginning. Instead, like the showman he is, he spends the entire Tribal Council feigning indecision about whether he’ll save Kirby, to the point where Mark’s head threatens to explode.
In the end, as a Sad Furby montage plays in the background, Feras makes a speech about how much fun he’d had playing with Kirby and how much he respected her game, but he’s playing the idol for himself.
Kirby is disappointed. “You should have told me,” she says to Feras, as her torch is snuffed.
“Thank you, though.”