Okay then.

Pop quiz for you all: who is Monika? Who left has the most confessionals? How many episodes did Brian have no confessionals in? Which castaway don’t you fuck with? To be fair, so much of my time has been dedicated towards hoping Shonella survives and Benji gets the fuck outta there that even I would struggle to answer them all, because now that one of those goals has been accomplished I am not sure what else to do rather than religiously yas-queen the final two contenders in the game who are Shonella aaaaaaaaaa *does a little dance*

Ahem.

Part of this can be chalked up to bad editing. Really, really bad editing. Like, look at this shit.

It was pointed out to me that whoever wins this season will have at least six episodes with zero confessionals. The conventional wisdom in AUSvivor, with it lasting roughly two weeks longer than US Survivor, is that quieter games are more successful. With so much time and so little energy, it’s frighteningly easy to vote out whoever becomes top dog and not cause an exhausting amount of bullshit. What have they got but nature and opportunity?

This is a level beyond that, though.

Thinking back to 16 and 17, you’ll remember that even though Brooke was cut at seven, Lee and El maintained power throughout the season and Lee and Sam were big characters through it. Even after the great Asaga loss of power between Henry and Luke (ft special guess Tessa) Tara was a big character and Locky a huge uniting Terry-like force. This Final Seven, the one with the top confessional count is still at half of what Benji had, and the less said about Benji vs Monika the better.

This Final Seven has a Reality TV Star, a Miss Universe finalist, an AFL star, and one of the most accomplished Olympic athletes ever. They all combined have like twenty less than a self-help author. I cannot say I expected what was essentially a celebrities vs civilians season to have such an edit imbalance, but this speaks to the problem of the season.

Let me get out of this way- this week was fun. The Mat boot was pure strategy, true, and Benji only really needed a few confessionals to say the same thing fifteen times, but it was a boot that you could see all the machinations of. It was far less surprising than engaging, one of those heist movie boots where it’s not about what happens, but seeing how it does.

Afterwards, the Benji boot- while more relieving to get such a stain on the season out (my opinions on Benji did not age well)- was also interesting as you can see that the “amazing moves” he made the round before led to his target massively overinflating to the point where his arrogant half-measure of having Shonee use the extra vote let others blindside him and flush two items.

Indeed, it was a dethroning the likes of which you rarely see.

So now what?

Now, we have a show of side characters with no mains, and all of the storylines that were important have finished. All we know is that Shonella are besties, you don’t fuck with Shane Gould, and Brian is suddenly a power player. Sharn does not have a consistent story- she’s just there. Monika and Steve don’t have edits for God’s sake. I don’t really know where we go from this point.

This endgame is somewhat akin to Nicaragua, where we lost Marty, Brenda, and evil quitter harlot NaOnka three episodes in a row. Even then, we had consistent presences or stories from Holly, Chase, and Jane. Here, we have, at best, a Sash.

I really hate to bag on this season because overall I do like it. I like seeing where it goes and I do love some of the characters with it, but overall it’s been inconsistent with very few real storylines dropped in the middle of things. It’s akin to my complaints about modern Survivor seasons- it’s episodic with base plotlines in it. This season of SAU is worse in that regard- it doesn’t even have consistent base plotlines. While the characters are given some more room to breathe and we have some interesting events, this is a case of going too far with developing big characters and eliminating them early.

With SJDS, the season with the iconic Josh/Jeremy boot, we still had Jonclyn anchoring the season and Keith being a very distinct personality that showed up often. Here, we have nothing anchoring things. At best, we have Brian, and… hahaha, yeah, no. Brian cannot anchor a season. Sharn cannot anchor a season. Shane and Shonella could, maybe, but they can’t start now. This season feels like it’s blowing in the wind and where it lands, I doubt any of us will know.

That’s what’s in the future, but as it stands the immediate past was fun. On the surface level, we saw Mat and Benji both go home with their idols and Sharn get and immediately use one after she did what every USvivor fan wanted to see happen with challenge idols.

Mat played the role of quasi-moral anchor of the game well as he tried and failed to make a big betrayal of Brian, who the rest of the Champions see as scuzzy and the Contenders saw as Grubby. His alliance of admirable athletic awesome people came apart at the seams as the Contenders stood up for their little shit (with Monika doing things) and sent figurehead Mat home with his idol- just like Russell.

However, the next episode was defined Benji’s actions. While he lives in the reality where every move has to be as huge as possible and go exactly how he says (he would be a great US player then) he did not learn that he had to compromise at points. Benji wanted Mat to go with his idol but also wanted to make Sharn waste hers. He came up with a lie that caused Sharn to play it, but also made her play it on Mat at first. This made Benji frantically lie literally just before the votes to play it, extra-betraying Sharn and dunking on her despite Sharn ostensibly being a semi-ally he had no problem burning in favor of The Mighty Ducks.

On paper, it’s all well and good, but Benji did not consider that he had to compromise or sacrifice things to get ahead (though he did a good job of never talking to Sharn again and swearing to vote her out immediately after, I will note). This led to him, idol in his pocket, getting Shonee to use her vote steal to try and save him after he noted things were going south, possibly after he told Brian, who had immunity, that Sharn was trying to vote him out, and fixed his lie with a long awkward stretch of silence.

Benji didn’t wanna use his idol, so he relied on Shonee, who misplayed the steal a vote in a way that was really the logical answer (turns out if you steal a vote from someone you vote for, they have no vote on the revote to steal). If Benji deigned to give up his idol, he could have made it to Final Seven with the Contenders, steal a vote then, win out 4-3, and they would enter 3-3 with Brian and Monika probably reluctantly joining them. However, since the Contenders seem allergic to ever taking available avenues to succeed, Benji’s stinginess cost him.

Those are good stories, even if they’re told by lacking characters. However, those are gone, and we have no real stories left. I am excited to see what new stories we have coming up. A blank slate has a solid level of intrigue. However, they cleaned the slate way too late in the season, and there’s not enough time to make anything on it.

This is a huge dethroning. Is there time for anyone to take the throne?

-Cam

P.S. Even Steve knew how fucking insipid it was for Mat not to play his idol.