During the first 20 minutes of Survivor:South Pacific tonight, you’d probably wonder what happened to the “other” tribe (aka, the non Brandon Hantz tribe), and you wouldn’t be alone. The majority of the non-competition segment of the episode was consumed by Brandon Hantz and his revealing to more people that he is in fact Russell Hantz’s nephew. I’m going to take bets on whether or not next week, they’re going to allow Brandon to pop on over to the Savaii tribe to let Ozzy know.. just so they can milk the Russell thing that much longer.
Speaking of bets.. we should have a drinking game next week. Every time Brandon says “Christian”, you take a shot. Good luck, and enjoy your hangover.
Sophie Not Impressed
Like mentioned, the focus on the early part of the episode was the big reveal of “Lil’ Hantz”, as Brandon was sitting on the beach and pulled the classic line “I’m tired of wearing this shirt“. Ahh, classic stuff. I think I used that before when I was about 15 years old and weighed 120lbs wet, but I thought I was hot shit so I tried to find any excuse to take off my shirt to reveal my skinny chest.
Enough about me, back to Lil Hantz…
You have some ashes on your face, bro
Shortly after saying he’s not like his uncle (the most ruthless player in Survivor history), Brandon decides to turn a simple conversation with Mikayla into a really embarrassing moment for her by calling the tribe around and pointing out that she’s pretty much on her own in the game. Naturally, Mikayla goes off crying, as does Brandon, then he falls asleep with ashes all over him (wtf).
Stuff did happen on the Savaii tribe, like Ozzy telling Keith that he has the idol, and letting him know he only told him because he trusts him. Keith decides to keep on walking and report right to Whitney about this as she rocks his hammock. New “showmance”? I guess we’ll find out over time.
Redemption Island
I know this is out of order, but the most exciting stuff of the episode happened with Brandon and crew, so I had to get that out of the way first. Redemption Island was about as entertaining as you’d expect for two of the first people voted off competing against each other. Two “no names” at this point competing in some random challenge with two players from each tribe watching them. Redemption Island is an incredibly dull aspect of the game this early, and it doesn’t get much better later on. The most entertaining part of it was when Semhar decided to recite some weird prayer/poetry combo before the challenge.
It didn’t help, she lost. Running around in pretty much her bra for 95% of the time she was on air was not enough to save our “spoken word artist” as she was sent back to the dive bars of L.A. to recite the new poems she undoubtedly wrote about her 5 minutes on the show. Bye bye, Semhar.
Competition + Tribal Council
The immunity challenge was another pretty good one, where players had to race out, get some flag, then four players from the tribe wind up the rope to pull them in. This happens five times before two people on top of the wall pull up those flags then arrange them into a very easy puzzle. I am glad to see the competitions have been pretty close so far, as it does show how balanced the tribes were to start the year (unlike the old vs young experiment a few years back). Both teams were neck and neck until they had to pull up the flags by grappling hook. Coach did it flawless, while Whitney struggled a bit. This was the big difference in the challenge resulting in a win for Upolu.
After the challenge, the “fab five” (Ozzy, Jim, Ken, Barbie, and Elyse) got together and decided as a group that Papa Bear will be the next one to compete against Christine on Redemption Island. He knew it was coming, so Papa Bear did some scrambling in the form of the yearly fake immunity idol, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Ozzy has the idol, and though only two others know it, that was enough to easily vote however the tribe wanted.
They wanted Papa Bear gone, and so he was.
Tune in next week to see what other antics Lil’ Hantz will be up to.
