D: Episode one. Damn, what an intro to survivor. Thank you.

S: And I love when each personality, each person talks to camera. And that’s when you really find out the cards they’re all holding.

D: It’s like you hear what’s going on in their head.

S: Yes. Right. And because they forget. This is what has always intrigued me about people playing survivor. They don’t care how they’re perceived by the viewer at home.

D: Do they forget?

S: I think so. Because you know okay, so this is filmed like, you know, over what, 47, 50, you know, days and months before it gets played out. So they’re all watching it too. They’re all watching and they’re like, oh my gosh, I’m sure they must think, hey, I didn’t say that, that was edited wrong. So it’s all in the edit.

S: So episode one what happens? Tell me, what do you remember?

D: I remember, Kent burning Max’s hat.

S: Showing us who Kent is.

D: Wow. I mean, like you, you already know just by what he does and how he explains himself as a person, you get an idea of this kind of man, but then, wow, the real person.

S: And this is the person that is a multi-millionaire and this is what he uses his money for, because he’s quite proud of the fact that he’s toxic.

S: He says it.

D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

S: And as you said, he burned Max’s hat. Max is the primary school teacher. Kent is a millionaire. And he burnt Max’s hat and blamed it on the financial analyst. Myles.

S: Max hates Myles.

D: Yeah, but this is the first episode and the the …

S: Schoolyard bullying.

D: Yeah. And the personalities are just so strong from the people who are powerful in in life. You know, who are successful.

S: Who are successful in the constructs. The millionaires, the successful salespeople, the whatever, the go getters, the dynamic… and they come into here and they think they’re really, really…

D: So they just take control straightaway. They want to make an impact. They want to show people who’s got power straightaway, want to play the game. They think they know exactly what they’re doing.

S: And that’s what Kent thinks he’s doing. So Kent blames Myles and Max hates Myles anyway, because Max is just a boy in an adult’s body, and, schoolyard bullying. You know, Max would be bullying Myles.

D: Of course, 100%.

S: Max is is a horrible child, a horrible grown up child. Oh my goodness me. And it’s just so nasty. So nasty. Speaking of nasty. Oh my goodness. Look, I have been a victim of the girls group covens.

D: The coven. Wow. The forming of the of the coven.

S: Because I have to tell you this. Women love bonding. Because when we bond with like minded, you know, women, we’re just like, oh, my gosh, we feel so seen. And everyone bonds over that. But it can bite you because everybody thinks that they’re the alpha person in that group,

S: So they’re coven now and Laura thinks she’s in charge of this coven because she and mean girl Logan are calling the shots because in mean girl territory, the mean girls call the shots. We’re the mean girls. Remember from that show we watched where that’s what they say. Mean girls win.

S: So this is Logan, and now Laura wants to be part of that.

S: Zara and Karen are the two intelligent ones. And they’re like looking at everyone like, oh, look at these children playing these little games. But they’re they’re cool. They’re that.

S: What do we have to say about Brawn? There’s Nash.

D: There it is. Nash. My goodness. Well, like I said, with Kent, same thing.

D: So he’s a businessman, a salesman, right? Who can sell anything to anyone he says. He’s got that confidence. And we’ve met salesmen like that. And, in life, I would never deal with someone like that. But I could see how he would work in the construct.

S: He bamboozles people, you know, like KV from Suva Fiji.

S: I mean, we know people who just bulldoze people to get their way. And this is Nash. And what does Nash find? Right.

D: Yeah. Straight away.

S: Hidden immunity idol.

D: So these are the advantages I talked about. Some people in life get advantages, and so do get the upper hand. Right, in Survivor, they place stuff around. And you’re explaining all these things to me, and I’m going. Okay, cool. So this was the learning episode.

S: Yes. Because in episodes coming up, in future episodes, I’m going to let you go with this because you’ve understood something. This is your learning episode where you’re understanding how people are, etc.. But there’s something you said about, how the producers.

S: You know, because I’m always, it’s about the edit. I never think about how the producers also can influence.

D: So like in life.

S: That’s right. The construct keepers.

D: The the construct is there, but who’s pulling the strings. Right. So that’s a deeper, deeper thing. Later on I realised that and I was like, okay, this is what’s happening.

S: And we can talk about it from a future episode i’m going to say something about, what the host, Jonathan LaPaglia, had said in an interview about the non-eliminations, but he has said, look, we are duty bound because we have to produce a certain number of episodes per season. We don’t have enough people to eliminate every season. So we’ve got to have some, you know, real spanners.

S: So who’s controlling what? So the construct keepers are at the mercy of the people who want longer shows, I don’t know, want to see the the villains around longer, and people love villains.

D: Oh yeah. It makes for great TV.

S: So that’s what AJ, the poker player, is also saying, they’re all working on emotions. And so AJ doesn’t understand that. You know – But he said I don’t like that person. What do you mean they don’t like me. I’m going to vote them out. That’s what Logan’s group is.

D: That’s right. And I, I got a bit of respect for AJ because he’s there to play. And he’s doing it in an interesting way. Like, he plays poker. He’s just open. He’s just talking to people? He’s giving away his game. Almost.

S: Yes he is, because he doesn’t understand nuance. Anyway we’ll get to that in future episodes, but going back to the brawn tribe.

S: Now everyone’s just chilling because these are all the Alpha dogs, you know?

S: And you can tell who the Alpha boys and girls are in this tribe, right. So Nash is there to play, and so is Zen in a way.

S: So Zen is not offending anyone. Zen is not offensive. He’s fairly quiet. It’s interesting because Zen would normally just make everyone, a lot of women cringe.

S: But he’s on the brawn tribe, and I guess Morgan and, Kirstin and, Kate, there used to seeing this, you know, so, and he’s not offensive. He’s quite a polite young man.

D: He’s a good guy.

S: He’s not offending anyone.

D: He wants it. He’s hungry. You know, he’s got that hunger. I like that. He’s going to do anything to get it. I got to admire this. All right bro. Go for it brother.

S: But that’s why Nash pisses me off, man. Why do you have to be so…

S: You know. But then I think about when, this is what I’m saying. When I say, you know, my amateur psycho evaluation, amateur according Euro institutions, you know, Nash, you can tell, was bullied.

S: You know, rejected. Rejected. And so you’ve got to become glib and be able to make people just be under the spell of your words and sell anything. And I get that. That’s what he thinks. That’s his superpower.

S: And in his environment, sales, he’s the man. He doesn’t understand that in an environment like this he’s got to sell himself.

D: Yeah. So his power play straight away, five minutes into the game he found this idol. And his power play was to tell them right away.

S: He immediately put it on and decided to play it loud and proud and he walked back into camp just nonchalantly, and everyone’s going, is… is that an idol?

S: And everyone, feels just thrown off their game because immediately now Nash is now boss and and everyone’s going to side with him and no one can vote him off. So no alliances have been able to be formed and everyone’s now got to scurry.

S: So that’s what everyone’s pissed off about because he’s got the upper hand and everybody wants the upper hand.

D: Well I mean that was what he was saying in the beginning. Like everyone got their spot and then everybody’s getting to know each other.

D: Meanwhile, he’s like, no man, I’m here to play the game. So he goes, the first thing he does? He’s watched Survivor.

S: They’ve all watched Survivor. And they all think, and it’s very easy. It’s very easy for us all to sit home and say, man, I could nail this. I know I couldn’t play this. We’ve already explained in the introduction why I couldn’t play this.

D: I couldn’t play this either.

S: So anyway, Brawn wins the first challenge straight up in episode one, and that was working together as a team. That’s because Brawn, majority of them are used to playing team sports or team games or is that true? Because they’re all individual Brawn players? Morgan’s an Olympian, Kate is a dancer, Jesse’s a skateboarder, Ben’s a stonemason.

S: You know, Kirstin’s a firefighter. She might be the only one used to working in a team.

D: And Noonan. Footy.

S: Okay, team. You know, Zen hip hop artists, you know, Ursula. Powerlifter. These are all singular people.

D: Solo achievers.

S: Then P.D’s a coach, not a player.

D: Yeah, I guess strategy right, for team.

S: But they somehow knew how to come together better than brains did in the first rewards challenge. And it seemed a little bit easier, but I don’t think so. It’s all in all the filming. Are we meant to see that brains is just a fumbling bunch of idiots? I don’t know, it’s all in the edit.

S: I don’t trust the edit of things.

D: This is another interesting thing. Right? So when it comes to team things, when you put a group of smart people together, everyone is individually, thinking different things.

S: That’s right.

D: Different things. It’s, we should do it this way. No, we should do. And everyone is so smart that there’s a freaking clash. Nothing happens.

S: It’s what we’ve talked about before. So everyone holding hands in a circle, facing outwards, and, Everyone step forward. Go. Yeah. No one’s going anywhere.

D: And then if you watch the Brawn group, everyone knows. Okay, you got Ursula carrying all the bags you got all of them just know what to do because they know their strengths.

Yes. So they know to first do the physical then that mental.

D: Then they know to put Kate on the shoulders. She’s a dancer. She’s got the best balance.

D: On Ben’s shoulders coz he’s the tallest. Yeah. Then everyone’s supporting her legs. The strong people are around, so they just build  this pyramid. She. She’s the one with the balance and steady hands or whatever. She’s the dancer.

S: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

D: So. And like, you picked … the OCD shit. So to get that key of that thing.

S: She’s got to have focus, absolute focus.

S: So they win the first rewards challenge. Let’s go straight to immunity. And it’s again if you’re a Survivor fan, you should know the obstacles.

S: The games that they have to play are all crazy, but it’s all interesting. I love them.

D: It’s fun. It’s intense.

S: Yeah. Very intense. I, you know, it’s psychological. It’s physical. It’s a lot of it is very mental. It’s  mental mental mental.

D: I the competition. It’s a respect afterwards.

S: It’s a healthy thing. And I like it. Especially when people can figure out how to coordinate their, their strengths with each other.

S: I really love that.

S: So anyway, brains wins the first immunity challenge. But as we’re seeing, like because Nash had put himself up because he says he’s the great puzzle maker. But but people are saying, what’s he doing that for? He’s frustrating them, is frustrating everybody. So they lose unfortunately.

S: So, turns out he’s not the, you know, great puzzle seer or solver that he says he is. And everyone’s so frustrated and Noonan saying every time I put a puzzle piece in the correct place, he picks it up and puts it somewhere else and says, no, no, no, I think it goes here. So she’s used to guys, bullying her. So she’s like, oh my God.

S: But you know, she also doesn’t assert herself.

S: Brains wins the immunity challenge. They get to stay.

S: Now, Brawn goes to tribal council. This is your first tribal council where you understand what happens. Tribal council is my least interesting part of survivor. But it is interesting to see how people can change alliance and allegiance.

D: Yeah. Something interesting. It was, unexpected thing. I wasn’t sure what was happening at first.

S: As to what they have to do and how they have to do it?

D: Yeah. But I started to understand, like halfway through.

S: Why they all start, scurrying and start, you know, talking to each other and going for walks and why that immunity idol is important.

D: That’s right. And and then everything starts to make sense.

S: And why it’s pissed everyone off. Because what that idol has given Nash, is now, he doesn’t have to be a nice person. He doesn’t have to pretend. He’s king shit. He’s got the power.

S: Power. Is dangerous in the wrong hands, you know?

D: Yeah. And how? Because you don’t know anyone. And you play it like that without knowing anybody’s personality. You just straight up power play.

S: Because he’s used to being surrounded by people who applaud him every time he has something, he does something great. So he would have come and got parental attention from every time he’s, you know, did something, and they’re all good boy.

S: You know I’m sorry. I’m sorry guys. If you go on to things like this, you’ve got to be prepared to be evaluated like this.

D: Well, I mean, you know, they’ve played the game before them. He knows exactly… he goes straight out to get that thing.

S: All right, so when I saw him, I thought you mummy’s boy, you’re used to coming home with this something or the other and you know, good boy, you know, getting attention.

S: So he probably thought everyone there was going to go, Nash, you’re the man I’m with you.

S: Played it wrong, I think, because everyone now hates him. But they’re all under his control. Unfortunately, that means who goes home first? Candy.

D: That’s right. And you pick something up as well about Nash. Because Nash wanted Candy gone straight away.

D:  He’s the guy that she rejects. She’s the girl that rejected him.

S: Is it cruel to say that or is it factual? This is where they all come from.

D: Did he see her as a threat. Was was she really a threat.

S: No. But because I don’t know I don’t know why.

D: Because the biggest threat, if he was playing the game properly, he would have picked out the biggest threat and tried to get rid of that person if he had that power.

S: So they’re  so many that he could have gotten rid of first. And I think that he should perhaps have targeted Ben.

D: Yeah.

S: First, you know, because, target the guy that everyone likes.

D: Well, if that’s what he was doing, because he goes, I’m here to play the game straight away. He should have done that.

D: The strongest player. He should have gotten the strongest player out.

S: But instead he wanted to have the power first and then kick out the ones who reject him first.

S: So sorry, Nash, but that to me is just absolutely textbook of that kind.

S: So that’s it. Candy’s out. Episode 1.