Survivor: Cook Islands Ep. 5 - "Don't Cry Over Spilled Octopus"

For some reason, this week’s episode title inspires me to sing a song, and so I shall, mostly because I need to fill space for the float-over. Ahem.

Don’t cry for me, calamari!
The truth is, I’d never eat you
You taste like rubber
And you’re disgusting
But maybe someone
Will get real hungry

Hey, I never said it was a good song. Anyway, from our friends at Yahoo! TV:

Some of the Aitutaki tribe members unknowingly land on the Rarotonga tribe’s island; {someone} catches an octopus but {someone else} accidentally frees it while washing it off in the ocean; one castaway is voted off the island.

Obviously I have edited the spoiler somewhat because it might be more information than some people want, although the blanks may have been filled-in from the preview footage – I don’t remember, because I suck. Not unlike an octopus. Although I suspect I taste more like Mountain Dew or monkey meat than like a mollusk, but who knows.

Every season, when I see the previews for the brand-new Survivors, I say “I’m not going to watch this. It will just end up sucking.” Then, there’s some incredible twist that pulls me into the first episode, and I know full well that I can’t stop once I’ve started.

It’s this section of the season–after the twist has untwisted and before the merge–that drives me nuts and makes me wonder why I’m bothering. But rockle makes it all worth it. :slight_smile:

Now I have to go check Yahoo to find out who did what. I like rockle except when she makes me do more work.

Heh. You sound just like my trainees at work. Now I will use my most marketable skill (jumping to conclusions) to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out which one of my young padawans you are. Way to make me paranoid! :wink:

Spoil me, baby. Who does what?

According to my listings, Adam catches an octopus but Christina accidentally frees it while washing it off in the ocean.

I’m trying to place either of them. I still don’t know what most of these peoples’ names are. That’s what I hate about the earlier part of this show; you don’t really figure out who’s who until at least half of them are gone.

I’m looking forward to whatever weirdness Cao Boi brings tonight. He’s definitely doing some crazy but useful stuff – I love the way everyone is a bit stunned by the forehead mark but still dutifully goes to him for his “treatments”!

Wahoo! Loved the challenges tonight. And yes, Cao Boi brings the crazy.

Same day delivery for freshness, here are:

The imitation RICH RANKINGS:

FORGOT TO FILE A 1040- I guess you couldn’t outwit everyone!

Stephannie: Potatoes? If you’re going to get voted out, you should at least hold out for a steak.

EATING BEEF JERKY- You’re still playing, but you’re praying for a tribe scramble!

Christina: I was honestly surprised you didn’t get booted tonight.
Cao Boi: Your only hope at this point is that you’ll be carried along as a safe #2.
Nate: Clumsily manipulative. Making enemies. I don’t think you’ll go the distance.

WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT A MERGE?- Middle of the pack players, the lotta ya!

Ozzy: You’ll make the merge. But you’ll be one of the first to go after that.
Adam: Right now his friends are all making gay jokes about him and Nate.
Parvati: Seems to be treading water.

HEY! LOOK AT HIS MOHAWK-You might make the merge, but you’re grimacing from the jury row!

Sundra: Big move up by joining the alliance.
Jessica: You’re doing surprisingly well in challenges but your political skills suck.
Jenny: Seems to have handed over the lead to Rebecca. Hard to say yet if that’s smart or dumb.

LOOKING FOR A BIG TOM TO ENGLISH DICTIONARY- Big Tom has spent more combined days on the show than anyone. But he didn’t quite grab the brass ring.

Yul: The first guy to let go can’t keep the top spot.
Becky and Candice: Quietly advancing in a strong position.
Brad: Seems to be friendly with everyone.

ARE YOU A RAT OR A SNAKE?- Reserved for a MAXIMUM of two players. You have to be in the driver’s seat for this spot.

Jonathan: Moving you up a notch.
Rebecca: Another week of playing well.

WTF? Did I hear Probst correctly in the previews? Win or lose next week? Why compete?

Ok, we missed it tonight. Spoilers, please? Synopsis, 50 words or less?

The winning team probably gets a reward. I think they’ve done it like this before.

Well, it’s over here on the west coast so I figure there’s nothing to spoil (except for you Tivo folks, but deal).

Christina is made to look the bossy nag. She irritates Jenny and others because she talks with supposed knowledge and authority about how she’ll cook the food, when, really, it’s just limited ratios of crab, fish, seawater, and coconuts. She did NOT free the octopus as Yahoo! TV suggested, but was adding seawater to a pot of cut octopus for cooking when it overfilled, and octopus pieces scattered in the ocean (not many of them, it seemed to me). She repeatedly said she thought Jenny was right there to help here, pissing off Jenny and Adam (or whoever octopus-catcher was) at the same time. I turned to DeathLlama and said, this team is losing the immunity challenge…it was pretty obvious they were setting up drama to make Christina look like a possible chopping block victim.

Cao Boi, Ozzy, and Flicka/Jessica go explore the “mystery island” that turns out to be the other team’s camp. Oops. Awkwardness abounds. Cao Boi bores everyone with tales of mythology (Pavarti said it was Chinese mythology, but isn’t Boi Vietnamese?), then has the nerve to ask for some of the spices the other team had won in an uneventful and pretty uninteresting reward challenge. He was shot down as quickly as he should have been. Dumbass.

John the Writer is re-ent to Exile island. He is convinced the immunity idol has already been found, and shares this with both tribes (when asked by Jeff) upon his return.

Uneventful immunity challenge. Raro wins. After mentioning a craving for mashed potatoes–supposedly a sign that she had given up and wanted to go home–Stephannie is sent home. The earlier foreshadowed issue of Christina’s bossiness and self-importance is mentioned at Tribal Council, and she is stunned and apologetic, claiming it must be from working with cops all day.

So there you go.

Ruffian, ashamed to be as much of a Survivor junkie as she is

The Roros came back from the last TC. The next morning the men felt threatened; they all got up early and began doing chores around the camp. The women thought life was good.

Adam went fishing and caught an octopus. Or, depending on your point of view, was caught by an octopus - it wrapped itself around his ankle and wouldn’t let go so he walked it back to camp where Nate was able to pry if off.

Several clips were shown of Christina telling the other players what to do intercut with the players complaining about how Christina was acting bossy (comparisons were made to JP). Christina was washing the cut up octopus at the shoreline and accidentally spilled some of the meat into the ocean. Adam showed up to help her and she made some remark that implied she felt Jenny was partly to blame for the accident (Jenny had been nearby while Christina was working and had walked away. Christina felt that Jenny should have stayed to help.) The incident was relayed around the tribe and everyone, especially Adam and Jenny, was mad at Christina.

The reward challenge was for wine, spices, and fishing equipment. It was an endurance weight-lifting contest. The tribes were organized into three pairs with each person holding a rope over a pulley to a hook. The remaining players piled weights on to the hooks. Adam and Nate were together on one stand and gave one of the most homoerotic performances in Survivor history. Yul and Jonathan were paired together and Yul unexpectedly was the first player to drop his rope. Candice and Sundra were a team; Candice held up pretty well, but Sundra dropped her rope next. Flicka and Ozzy were the only surviving Aitu pair. Stephannie and Rebecca were paired and one of them (I forget which) dropped her rope. Flicka did some trash talking and held up pretty well but she eventually lost her rope. Adam/Nate and Christina/Brad won if for Aitu. Adam suggested they send one of the people who’d already been on Exile Island back and Jonathan was sent. He spent hours looking for the idol but obviously didn’t find it.

Cao Boi, Ozzy, and Flicka decided to take the boat and paddle to another island. They tried to convince Sundra to join them but she realized it was suspected it was going to be a push to form an alliance and didn’t want to participate. Instead once they boaters left, the allies talked to Sundra and invited her to join them as a fifth. She accepted. Meanwhile the boaters arrived on the other island and started looking for fruit. Instead they ended up wandering into the Raro camp. The Raros clearly were not happy to see them (somebody made a comment about it being the three Aitus they least wanted to see) but Cao Boi insisted on inviting himself in. There was an awkward silence and then Cao Boi began telling some long rambling history about Vietnamese mythology. Cao Boi then trying to get some help from the Raros to hunt for coconuts and asked if he could have some of the spices they had won but the Raros (especially Adam) flat out said no.

The immunity challenge was a balance race in the ocean. The tribes had to built platform poles on the beach. Two members of each tribe had to climb up a platform and then the other players had to use to poles to form a moving bridge for them to walk across to another platform. Then when those two had reached the second platofrm, everybody would race to a third very small platform which all eight team members had to climb up on and balance on simultaneously (while groping each other in wet swimsuits). The race was very close but the Aitus won it.

At Raro camp, everybody seemed in agreement to vote off Christina. Then Nate and Stephanie went to get water and Stephanie made a comment that she had figured it it hadn’t been Christina, it would have been her getting voted off and if that had happened she would have at least been eating mashed potatoes and gravy that night. Nate decided this meant Stephannie had given up on the game and passed a distorted version of what she said around. It got back to Stephannie and she said that she did still want to stay in the game. It appeared it was a dead issue but at Tribal Council, everybody voted for her (she voted for Christina) and she got booted. In her end-credt confessional, she admitted she wasn’t committed to the game and the other players had sensed it.

In the previews: In next week’s episode, there will be a challenge (presumedly for a reward) after which both teams will have to vote off a member.

They have done this before, most recently in Palau, where we also started out with 90,000 players. In that case, the tribe that won the pre-T.C. challenge actually got two “rewards” – food, and “information,” a/k/a “the ability to screw with the other tribe’s vote-out strategy.” Of course, they didn’t know about that information part until they got to T.C., when Jeff told them that they would be able to vote to give someone from the other tribe individual immunity. And they got to eat beef stew, biscuits, and root beer in front of the other tribe (which was cruel but also kind of awesome).

With this new Exile Island twist, I imagine there is going to be a similar multi-reward, although I’m not sure how it will play out. Probably the winning tribe will get to send someone from the losing tribe to X.I., saving them from that night’s vote, although you never know. But maybe the winning tribe will also get to decide who goes from the other tribe. I don’t think that’s been done before. That could be interesting. Or maybe they get to pick someone from the other tribe to join theirs. Lots of possibilities. I know I’d like to know what they’re playing for. Because I could come up with ideas all day long.

This season hasn’t been very interesting to me. Flicka lost the chickens, which was a boneheaded move, and Cao Boi has his annoying stories. But no one has been as high on the frustration meter as some earlier contestants had been. Heck, the only thing that really had me rolling my eyes was the ineptitude of using the firestarters. (Last week, Jeff did mention that someone was working with the magnesium. Finally!) I thought there might be some repercussions and recriminations over booting Billy, but that hasn’t played out. (I would have loved it if the next challenge after booting Billy was a buck-buck championship! :smiley: )

And they’re too well-fed. Some people say that starving people don’t make good television. But I think that it’s more interesting. Remember when the rice washed away in Australia? Or the jerky incident? The loss of Rupert’s spearhead was good because they needed it to catch fish. In this season there’s a plethora of fishing equipment. The fish are abundant, but they sure seem to be easy to catch. Lack of food seems to bring out the bickering. Bickering leads to characters who are more interesting to watch. We can’t believe some people aren’t booted, and we rant and rave when a useful person is.

I’m still watching, and I’ll watch the next season and the next. But I’m hoping for a bit more drama.

Count me in among the folks who like the dearth of drama. There’s no clear-cut alpha on either tribe (Tom the Fireman, and while there are some annoying people, there’s no one to hate (Johnny Fairplay). We’re watching them survive as tribes and compete in challenges. I like this a lot better.

Totally agree. When Cao Boi knocked the baby bird out of the nest last week, and every one was stressing over it, my wife said “In a real Survivor, they’d have started cooking that chick by now.”

The food/no food thing is really a toss-up for me. On the one hand, when they’re well-fed, they have less to do and more time to complain about how people aren’t doing anything. But when they have to fight for every scrap, that leads to nothing but complaints about how hungry they are. It’s a double-edged sword.

Although, the rice adventure in Australia was one of the finest Survivor moments ever.

Poor Stephannie. Booted just for expressing a longing for potatoes. And Nate had the audacity to look sorry when it was all his fault. I really don’t know how he got from “I’d like some mashed potatoes and gravy” to “Gee, I’d really like you all to vote me out tonight.” Wha?? Can’t a woman express a desire for potatoes without any ulterior motive? Hell, I was lying on the couch watching last night, and I wanted mashed potatoes! My roommate didn’t throw me out of the house!

I think you’re a little wrong here. What he said (IIRC) was “It’s not there now”, leaving it possible for others to think he found it. Or did I misread this? Jonathan is my only hero, but I think Pavrati is hot. (What kind of name is a name that pronounced “poverty”?)

I really like the food situation this time. Giving them food (even just plain rice) is always a cheap cop-out IMHO. Here, they have to hunt & gather. Sure, it’s a nice locale, so there’s enough to H&G so far, but it seems like the pickins are gettin slim. They made a mistake in S1, where the local waters were over-fished and almost devoid of things to eat, other than the rays that Hatch kept catching. It made me laugh to see those dudes try and catch sea-fish with terrestial worms, like they were fishing for largemouth bass or something. :rolleyes: (Hint, try something that the ocean fish eat.)

Little Nemo- good breakdown, but any dude with the hidden immunity idol in his pocket has to have a nice edge.

Well … um, uh … no, you’re not our target tonight! We want to get rid of … uh … um, BiblioCat! Yeah, BiblioCat.

[RIGHT]** looks around to make sure that BiblioCat sees me winking at her **
:wink: :wink: ;)[/RIGHT]

Remember the Baluts in Pulau? Pickled duck embryos…

I thought it was mildly interesting that they didn’t show the traditional post-wine drunken stupidity. Usually there’s a lot of drama involved (how many beers have you had? where did he throw up???). Maybe they got back to camp, cooked some dinner, drank the wine, and went to sleep?