As an episode of Survivor, “Don’t Cry Over Spilled Octopus” feels more like a setup, punctuated by something we think production doesn’t allow anymore.
Survivor: Cook Islands had a pretty quiet episode for its fifth entry, chronicling the further adventures of Rarotonga and Aitutaki versions 2.0 with many of the plotlines not really having much immediate effect on the game. But after a premiere that started off with a bang, can we really blame production?
Day 12 on Raro started out rather quietly, with the remaining men having a conversation about the women sleeping in a little and then deciding to go to work. Episode 4 proved that the ladies of Raro had learned a lot about what they were capable of … and of course, Parvati, with a smile on her face, said she was quite happy with the result in a confessional.
Aitu had a brief work ethic-based scene of its own before Jeff Probst welcomed everyone to the reward challenge and Aitu saw J.P. had gone home. This challenge consisted of a variant of a weight-holding challenge, done in three pairs of two with each person using one hand to hold it up.
- Raro: Rebecca and Stephannie, Adam and Nate, and Cristina and Brad (weight-givers: Jenny and Parvati)
- Aitu: Jessica and Ozzy, Jonathan and Yul, and Sundra and Candice (weight-givers: Cao Boi and Becky)
There’s a certain amount of strategy to this one, which Probst commented on. Aitu focused on Raro’s strongest pair (Nate and Adam) first, while Raro handed weights to all three pairs. It also didn’t hurt that Raro had most of the physically gifted players left in the game. Ultimately, Raro’s strategy won out and earned the tribe of reward of wine and fishing gear. Jonathan also got a return trip to Exile Island.
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Day 13 dawned with Raro having killed both bottles of wine and Adam walking up with an octopus around his foot. But Survivor didn’t focus on the battle between nature and man. Instead, it started telling a story about Cristina trying to cook and losing octopus bits in the ocean. Then she tried to pass the blame to Jenny. With the ominous music and very little opportunity for Cristina to tell her own story, suffice it to say that that was a neat way to move her into the danger column.
Now came Ozzy, Jessica, and Cao Boi’s trip. One has to wonder how production actually allowed this, because they explicitly said they wanted to “check out the other island.” That “other island” turned out to contain Raro’s camp.
Part of the fun of Survivor in the pre-merge phase is that you generally don’t know what’s happening on the other tribe, or at least that’s the illusion that the show presents to us with the surprised reactions each time Probst tells the other tribe who went home last time. Since Cao Boi had to learn Parvati’s name at least, it’s not entirely an illusion. Suffice it to say that Raro did not like the visit.
Back on Aitu, Yul started to pull Sundra in to his alliance with Candice, Becky, and Jonathan. Jonathan, meanwhile, came to the conclusion that the idol had been found on Exile. Both scenes didn’t take up much time, but they seeded a few developments that will end up paying off eventually.
In this episode’s immunity challenge, everyone had to assemble poles to transfer two tribemates from one platform in the water to another, then stand all together on a tiny platform. Raro borrowed Aitu’s two-pole only strategy, and then Aitu’s Becky used the low-to-the-ground strategy from Raro. Although Raro got to the tiny platform first, Aitu got very up close and personal (and benefited from Raro falling into the water) to win.
Raro’s earlier storyline about Cristina seemed like it was about to pay off, but then Stephannie made a comeback to the danger zone by saying to Nate that she wanted some food, which few people responded well to.
At Tribal Council, Stephannie had some other interesting lines, and Nate called Cristina “overbearing.” That set up the final bits of Stephannie’s storyline, since she was voted out in a 7-1 onslaught. (Stephannie herself voted for Cristina.)
Next: Retro rewatch: Cook Islands episode 4
For episode 6 of Cook Islands, we’ll talk about the origins of vote-splitting.