Australian Survivor Report Card - Titans v Rebels - Episode 18

Featuring cancelled skunks, opera singers, shots at Alex and good spirits

Previously on Australian Survivor: Alex was in a snit, Caroline could hear how words were spelt and Raymond budged.

Australian Survivor Report Card - Titans v Rebels - Episode 17

Here’s the report card for the eighteenth episode of Titans v Rebels

Cancelled Skunks
Grade: D

Raymond, our one true rebel king, explains to us, the patient and baffled viewing audience, why he flipped on the previous vote.

It’s because he has the popcorn advantage, aka the suicidol, and he has a nefarious scheme up his mad sleeve. He is going to spend the entire episode pretending to have lost all enthusiasm for the game so that everybody will take sympathy on him and vote him out.

Raymond must emerge from his hammock cocoon as a beautiful popcorn butterfly

Feras, who if he were a player in any other season of this or any other franchise of the show, would be utterly furious with Raymond for his betrayal last episode, is, of course, totally cool with this. In fact, he finds the entire plan to be so reeking of mischief that he’s completely enamoured with it.

How enamoured? Raymond’s crazy plan is a black cat who’s walked under a freshly painted white ladder, and Feras is notorious cancelled skunk, Pepé Le Pew. That’s how enamoured.

Opera Singers
Grade: C

Of course, even if this wasn’t a brand new advantage, this is a plan that shouldn’t ever succeed. Raymond could just as easily be running this scam with a normal idol.

But there’s no time to think about that. There’s now a Reward Challenge (a classic game of Slingshot Tile Tough Mudder Run) which sees Alex win a high tea (“I once dated an opera singer who could hit a high C,” he says. “But a high T? Hoo boy. That’s some impressive pitchwork.”).

Alex selects the most eclectic group he possibly can for the reward (because on this batshit season, even the reward companion picks are loose as fuck), and they discuss The Raymond Situation over tea.

ALEX: (to camera) This is everything a high tea needs to be... Uh, apparently. (shrugs) 

Valeria doesn’t really care about Raymond’s troubles. She’d rather just vote out somebody more interesting and wait for him to quit. She clarifies.

“I seem to be not coming across as a soft person in this game,” she says. “Perhaps it is because I keep correctly observing how terrible and awful all the other weak players in this season are, with their stupid, dumb errors that make them look like soulless worms. And not those giant worms from the movie Dune or Dune 2: The Worms Are Back In Town either, but little teeny worms that I could squish between my fingers because they are so puny.”

“Sorry,” says Kitty. “What was your point, exactly?”

Shots At Alex
Grade: D-

Before Valeria has a chance to explain, it’s time for an immunity challenge, a simple game of Three Storey Maze. A classic.

JLP: This groove is incredibly shallow! Even shallower than Alex! ALEX: (hurt by this shot from nowhere) Hey!

Kirby wins immunity, Raymond tells everybody to vote for him and we spend most of the rest of the episode waiting for somebody - anybody - to come to their senses and point out this is crazy.

Valeria comes closest. Once again, she reiterates that she sees no point in voting out Raymond.

“It might sound brutal,” she explains. “But that is only because I am a very, very brutal person. Like, phenomenally brutal. With brutality that only the most brutal brute could begin to imagine. Very brutal to that degree.”

Good Spirits
Grade: B-

But Valeria’s common (and brutal) sense fails to win the day. Instead, Raymond’s superb, moping performance, with magnificent, giggling Feras support, sees everybody march to the voting urn and announce proudly and loudly that they will give their favourite imp of the season his most fervent wish and vote him out.

I just hope Raymond has deliberately been a gorgeous little oddball this entire season solely to make this goofy choice halfway plausible. (Also, I’m devastated that Kelli was never given the opportunity for such a performance.)

Raymond’s mad plan succeeds and Valeria goes home, but she takes it in good spirits.

In a normal season, such antics would doom Raymond to zero vote finalist status. In this season, they’ll all forget about it and reset next episode in whatever new alliances take their whim.

“I was too soft,” she says. “Like one of your sponge cakes that you put in the trifle along with the jelly and custard, and then pour vodka all over it. But I shall not be soft on the jury - I shall be a living trifle cake of fury and wrath, and I will destroy you with my savage questioning.”

So, y’know, good spirits for Valeria, anyway.