Australian Survivor 2019 episode 1 recap: Champions and the others

Another year has passed yet Australian Survivor 2019 episode 1 cannot get past Champions gaining the majority of screentime as Contenders flounder.

Spoilers for who won Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders last season.

Death, taxes, mateship; these are the universals of Australian Survivor, a deeply cinematic version of the classic reality competition show made famous with its CBS version. There are definite differences between how both Ten Network and the US version handle its cinematography, storytelling and its episode coverage (especially episode length), and out the gate its the tribe with familiar faces shining early.

Despite both the Champions and Contenders having athletes on their teams, Australian Survivor 2019 episode 1 had a decidedly athletic champion focus. They even spent the opening montage spoiler reminding us that nobody should mess with Shane Gould, who won last season as a Champion. The next 50 days of gameplay will determine if we see a repeat in the second attempt.

That’s not to say we didn’t start with an extended look at the Contenders, fighting through the beginning of an 80s action movie to remind us all they came to play. Oddly enough, despite spending all this time to provide a documentary-like look to these Contenders, we still had no idea who any of them were. Instead, they were playing up their down-and-out status as people with something to prove.

Of course, the Champions introduced themselves as entities that should be known to the viewers of Australian Survivor, with athletes, CEOs and even a former player in fan-favorite Luke Toki representing those playing for pride and honor. Despite having “nothing to prove,” these are titans of their industries coming into a game where losing is not an expectation.

As Jonathan LaPaglia called the tribes in one by one, it was interesting to see how the Contenders were quick to provide their opinions. They noted the age differences both secretly and openly, with Daisy even going so far as to say she was stoked to go up against the Champions as a “young, diverse” group against an older demographic. “Diverse” was an odd qualifier considering how brazenly white the casting for this season is.

Either way, with tensions slightly bubbling, we got to the first Reward Challenge of the game. Fruit, veggies, firewood, rope, and fire in the form of flint were up for grabs as tribes sent one player each to compete in a small arena over a sandbag. Dragging it to your corner awards a point, and the first tribe to win three rounds wins.

The first round saw gold miner John “The Mullet” face off against AFL superstar Simon, and despite years of professional scrimmage experience, The Mullet was able to run in quick, dive on the ball (bag), inch himself backward and win the first point. Meanwhile, Contenders player Matt’s experience as a pro wrestler saw him edge out Luke, resulting in a quick 2-0 lead.

It wasn’t until Abbey came out there to show Daisy why she shouldn’t be so cocky that the Champions had some pride in this physical challenge, taking a point. Anastasia broke down the equations in her head necessary to take out Laura, evening things out at 2-2. Twenty years of expertise in the arena helped against Andy, fighting through fatigue and a reset to complete the come-from-behind victory.

That runtime would have been more than half of a Survivor premiere; there was still more than an hour left to go for the Australian Survivor 2019 episode 1 premiere! As we saw the Champions in action, it became clear as day for Luke that he would likely be finding his way through the tribal dynamics and, if not, would be helping to put them to bed as an orderly. He laid the “old folks home” schtick on fairly thick!

The Contenders was a bit more of an Andy-focused affair, lying about his background to reveal himself as a cocky Survivor superfan. He was practicing all of the challenges and made sure to let others paint small targets on their backs, so hopefully (for Andy), he goes for a less Derwin-like approach.

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We got a lot (a lot) of Olympics heroics out of the Contenders tribe, with Nova talking about how she did her country proud as the first Aboriginal to win for Australia and, later in 2013, the first to join federal parliament. Steven Bradbury’s Olympic heroics played more into his adaptability, as his freak win storyline seems to play into his adaptive game plan strategy by creating a seven-person athletes alliance.

If there’s something Ten Network needs to improve on, it’s finessing their audio Frankenedits. Luke talking about bringing David into the fold and talking about Bradbury and his numbers made it clear that production was cutting a bunch of audio to create an early narrative.

Whereas the Champions involved establishing several key faces and favorites to cheer for, the Contenders were edited as a collective underdog, with Andy dictating who is or isn’t a threat. After a Rupert-esque shelter built six feet in the air collapsed on its own weight and people getting sick after eating uncooked beans, it looked like the worst was facing this group.

There was a healthy bit of banter before the first Immunity Challenge of Australian Survivor 2019, but it was more or less the same “we’ll win,” and “you’re old!” The challenge itself saw teams climbing over a series of obstacles before pushing a heavy deck on a track leading to a wall. After using the deck to climb up and over, tribes would pull up a wall of tiles to stand in front of them, with two players knocking out five tiles to win immunity.

The Champions were, understandably, athletic in their approach to the increasingly higher walls, taking an early lead. The A-frame being six meters (20 feet in Freedom units) kept that lead going, but that didn’t stop John “The Mullet” from helping pull everyone up the wall, going so far as to throw his body over the side of the wall to grab Shaun and pull him up before advancing.

The Champions’ huge lead felt insurmountable until it got to the hammer toss, but Andy and Shaun got into a groove while Bradbury specifically threw like someone who stumbled into Olympic gold by pure accident. The Contenders won the first challenge of the season on Day 2, but it felt like Bradbury’s athletes alliance made him cockier than he should have been.

Bradbury, ET, Nova, Abbey, Simon, Susie and Ross comprised that power alliance, while the rest saw Luke scrambling with the non-athletes to form some sort of voting bloc to take out Susie. However, with Nova serving as a mole against his group, the true scramble focused on who on the bottom should be voted out; Pia or Anastasia.

It served as a weird premiere for Australian Survivor 2019, as the discussions at camp weren’t focused on “which alliance will win;” it was focused on just which players in the group screwed in the numbers was going home. While we still have no idea who between a third and half of the Contenders are after 82 minutes of television, we now have an intimate knowledge of various cliques within the Champions.

At Tribal Council, Jonathan was quick to highlight peoples’ backgrounds to paint a picture, asking upon Nova’s experience with politics, Janine on the difference between the CEO offices and shelter, and reminding everyone that David is a model. However, even with a tribe split along a line clearly dividing groups, Anastasia didn’t give up a fight when insisting she wouldn’t go down without one.

It led to a rather ho-hum vote where the votes were split between two people at the bottom. Whereas Luke’s group voted for Pia, the athletes, Pia and, surprisingly, David, voted against Anastasia, sending her home as the first boot in a 9-3 split. We’ll never truly get to know what a mental champion is after all.