Year: 2007

Lorette and Mandla finally turned on Angie in Survivor South Africa: Malaysia Episode 12, the first time all season they’ve actually done something from a gameplay standpoint. That left us with a final four of Grant, Amanda, Lorette, and Mandla. I haven’t been particularly impressed with any of the bunch, but I do have to give credit to Grant for playing the game the whole time, even if much of what he’s done hasn’t made any sense. Also, Amanda outlasting the rest of her tribe is worth noting.

The communique doesn’t beat around the bush. It warns them of an endurance competition where one of them will be eliminated. Lorette is confident about this because she had to do a lot of standing in the sun for her police training. Amanda assumes nobody will take her so she’ll have to get there on her own.

The challenge is a balancing act. They must stand on a post. The first person out will be out of the game, a twist I’m not crazy about. The last person standing will be able to choose who goes with them to the end.

For the first 15 minutes, they’re allowed to use a pole to help balance. Lorette turns around to face the other way, a smart move because she’ll remain focused on just one thing. As the largest person there, Mandla’s not surprisingly the first person out, just shy of the one and a half hour mark. Definitely a challenge designed to favor people with smaller feet. He has been eliminated from the game. At 2 hours 50 minutes, the tide rises to the rope line beneath them, which is the signal to get on one foot. What a stupid idea. All that work, and it comes down to this. Grant falls within seconds. Amanda falls seconds after that. Lorette is the last one to fall, and she wins immunity.

Believing he knows the type of person Lorette is, Grant feels he would offend her by campaigning for her to take him, so he just sits back and lets her decide on her own. Amanda, on the other hand, decides she needs to convince Lorette to take her. She says she doesn’t want to put too much pressure on her, but it’s hard to tell what Lorette’s actually thinking because Amanda just keeps getting monosyllabic grunts in response.

Lorette has chosen to take Grant with her. Not entirely surprising, and it was pretty much her only option with such a small jury. If she got rid of Grant, Angela and Dyke would have voted for Amanda, and Angie’s a big risk for voting against Lorette. Of course, Grant won’t be easy to beat, as he has been the puppetmaster of his tribe all along. He dragged Lisa along for way, way too long, then he did the same for Angie, and both of those two really shaky alliances suggest how much influence he had, as he saved people who should have been eliminated long before they were.

Even now, 4 weeks after the game began, nobody knows Grant’s an attorney.

Dyke asks Grant why he thinks Lorette does not deserve to win. He’s able to answer without offending, suggesting he played a better game.

Angela asks Lorette for examples of her proactive strategy. She discusses how she made strong alliances.

Angie wants to know how much of the relationship with Grant was real, and he says all of it was, going on about alliances and strategy and such. She obviously wants to know whether he’s actually her friend, a point which he somehow misses.

Mandla questions Grant about his strategy. Grant says he was playing all along, including not putting a target on his back in challenges, which some jury members may take offense to. He also makes a comment about Dyke, being booted for being too physically fit, and says it would have been stupid for him to have done this. Very easy for Dyke to misinterpret this and take it as an insult.

Amanda asks Lorette why their alliance played a charade, such as when Lorette said she considered Mandla her next target, which Amanda takes issue with because Lorette is always discussing integrity. Lorette says she would have taken Mandla out given the opportunity and that it wasn’t a charade.

For a lawyer, Grant stuck his foot in his mouth quite a bit during these questions. Lorette says she should win because she played hard and did her best in challenges. Grant acknowledges he came to play the game and wants them to vote on that basis.

What’s up with the delay in revealing the vote?

Angela reveals that she was pregnant while on the island but didn’t know it until afterward.

Rijesh blames the tribe shuffle for screwing up his game, when in reality he was buried by his overplaying long before.

Next, we got a look back at Survivor history, where Hein became the first person to make fire without anything manmade, along with the whining and disbelief from his tribemates that went along with it.

Hein is the winner of the viewer vote of soul survivor.

Rezki is still alive. They slaughtered another goat instead. Whatever difference that makes.

Elsie says she’s not really like she was on the show. Let’s hope that’s true.

Lisa says if she had to do it again, she might have lifted a finger.

Hein comes up with two scenarios about the challenge that cost him the game. He either fell asleep or was tired of playing. Looks like it’s still up to us to figure out what actually happened. My theory is that he just simply misjudged the time.

Votes
Dyke: Lorette
Angela: Grant
Mandla: Lorette
Amanda: Grant
Angie: Lorette

As much as I liked Lorette, it’s hard to see what she actually did in this game to deserve to win. I must say I’m shocked that Angie voted for Lorette, but ultimately, for someone who played the game so hard the whole time, Grant did completely screw up Angie’s question.