Cannon Carry Physical Race

Survivor: Pearl Islands continues the tradition of the past few seasons by kicking things off with a brand new, multi-stage challenge. One thing I love about this challenge is that it directly plays into the season's theme of pirate culture. The idea here is to simulate the pirates' needs to move from one island to another, transporting their artillery. Each tribe begins with a cannon, which, in itself, is really cool; you know before even seeing it that a challenge that involves pushing around a cannon is going to be a good one. The first obstacle is to take the cannon apart to fit its pieces through some fences, before putting it back together. Then, a rock garden needs to be cleared from the cannon to move through, and then, the cannon needs to be pushed through a pit of mud secured with wooden barriers, and finally, pushed along the sand to the finish. It's a quite physically demanding opening challenge, which I think is ideal to start things off. The entire idea feels very fresh for Survivor, so it also gets points for that. As for how the challenge actually plays out— it's also fantastic. The entire challenge, it's up in the air as to who is going to win. Early on in the challenge, Osten's pants begin to fall off, and so to make him feel less awkward, a few of the other men on the Morgan tribe also take off their clothes, in one of the most baffling strategic challenge decisions to be seen on Survivor. Jeff Probst is amused by this, but not as much as the editors, who cleverly implement a "Morgan Behind" chyron to appear right as the camera shows their naked behinds. We don't get editor jokes very often in challenges, so I love moments like these. It seems like Drake should be able to easily pull out the win, but at the final stage of the course, they essentially come to a full stop, struggling to push the cannon any further. Morgan actually passes them, and this is so close to the finish, it seems certain that Drake blew their lead- but then the tides changes again, and Drake makes one final push into victory. It is riveting television, especially as far as the narrative goes, as it is much more satisfying from the audience's point of few to see the likable, organized Drake tribe pull out the first victory than the goofy, nude Morgan tribe. This challenge also does a great job at showcasing certain castaways' characters; we get to see Sandra's sassiness as she mocks the Morgan men for stripping naked, and we get to see some of Rupert's first ever pirate yells as he struggles to move the cannon any further. All of it just comes together so nicely. It's worth pointing out that in recent years, this challenge's ending has raised controversy as it has been noted that Drake's torch (another element of the challenge) seemed to go out before they reached the finish, and therefor, they should have been disqualified. This may very well be true, but much like Fallen Comrades in Africa, I don't think it's fair to knock the challenge and the quality of what we were presented for this unfortunate oversight.

5/5

All Tied Up Physical Race

I really like this one, it's a couple of brand new ideas thrown together to create what feels like a very creative challenge. There are really two distinct parts of this challenge. Part 1 involves 3 members of each tribe tied to a raft, with members from the opposite tribe back at the beach. The idea is for one of the people tied to the raft to untie themselves, and then untie the other two tribe members as soon as possible, because the people at the beach are pulling on a rope, sending you further and further back into the ocean. Once everyone is untied, they swim back to shore to begin part 2. This is a very interesting concept because it puts a lot of pressure on both the people on the raft, who need to act fast, as well as the people pulling, because it is vital for them to put the other tribe at as great of a disadvantage as possible. Part 2 involves using coordinates to line up two ropes on a designated area on the sand. Where the ropes intersect is where the tribe needs to dig to retrieve their flag. This coordinate idea will be explored more in future seasons, but it's really neat to see that this is actually where it started. This also all ties back into the pirate theme, as each tribe has "prisoners" who are sent adrift in the sea.

4/5

Pull Your Weight Endurance

This is really the first challenge of the season that doesn't play into the season's theme in any way, but it's still great. First off, this is a rare team Endurance Challenge, which we haven't seen since The Australian Outback's gruelling "Water Torture" challenge. The way it works is, each tribe selects their lightest member to be hoisted up above the water in an uncomfortably numbing position, while the rest of the tribe uses their collective strength to hold them up; if the tribe lets go of the rope, their floating tribe member will fall into the water. Over time, the person at the front of the line has to let go of the rope, putting more pressure on the tribe's stronger members. It ultimately comes down to a thrilling battle between Osten and Rupert, but Drake wins again. I wish they would do more stuff like this.

4/5

Boarding Party Physical Race / Mental

This is Survivor's second attempt at a physical contact challenge, this time relating to pirate battles, and I'm always very conflicted while watching this one. I... think this is an improvement over Thailand's finicky design? Now there's this mental component where you have to try and figure out the best, safest way to the other tribe's platoon. When two people cross paths, they have to engage in combat; the first one into the water has to go back to the start. But really, it doesn't matter if this challenge is designed better than Thailand's legendary "Pilfering Pirates" challenge, because it doesn't play out in even nearly as interesting a way. The biggest issue here is that Drake decides they are going to throw the challenge. This isn't the challenge's fault, but the challenge definitely suffers because of it. In my opinion, not a single battle is very interesting– all of them end within seconds, and even ordinarly surprising victories like Tijuana over Jonny Fairplay are undercut by the fact that Drake lost on purpose. Even if Drake wasn't going to throw this challenge, certain battles just felt like a waste of time. Anyone vs Osten— Osten will win. Almost all of the man vs woman matches— the man will win. It's true that there is a strategic element to it, where you can try and avoid competitors that seem too strong for you to overcome, but I never felt while watching this that anyone took advantage of this concept. This is probably the lowest I'll ever rate a physical contact challenge, since they are usually some of my favorites, but they're only going to get better from here.

2/5

Survivor Smoothie Miscellaneous Challenge

Food-eating challenge time! It's back to being a tribal challenge, and do you know what else is back? The idea of using a wheel to randomly decide what will be eaten, like in The Australian Outback. I don't like that as much, because it eliminates any kind of shock factor outside of the initial reveal of what the ingredients are– ingredients– wait, that's also something different! You see, this season, instead of eating exotic foods, random things from the ocean, some of them gross, some of them, not so much, are blended together to make disgusting "Survivor Smoothies." I'm not sure what the general public consensus is on something as obscure as this, but I've never like this idea as much as just doing a regular food-eating challenge. Besides from having to use the wheel, I don't like how this pretty much completely eliminates the novelty of this stuff being actual delicacies, regularly eaten where the season is filmed; it takes out a lot of the cultural significance of the challenge. But all my complaining aside- this is still a food-eating challenge; no matter what, it's always going to be a great time, and it's always going to be a Survivor classic. A notable event during this challenge is that the Drake tribe had this plan to have Michelle intentionally act like she struggles to drink her smoothie, despite actually loving to eat gross stuff. The idea is that if there is a tie-breaker, which there was, the other tribe would chose her to show-off in the final round, thinking she would definitely lose. Cut to the challenge— Michelle chugs her smoothie faster than anyone. It's a great, unintentionally funny moment that contributes to her demise later in the episode. I should also mention, they also bring back the Amazon music I mentioned really liking for this challenge, so it also gets bonus points for that.

4/5

Shoulder the Load Endurance

Wow, another team endurance challenge! This is pretty much a new take on The Australian Outback's "Water Torture" challenge, and this version is going to become something of a Survivor classic. I will say, I like Season 2's version better, because it gives everyone something to do instead of just the weight-bearers, but this is still a super solid challenge. Instead of each tribe only having one weight bearer, each tribe has three. Instead of the rest of the tribe having to transport buckets of water to add to the weight-bearers, every five minutes, 20 additional pounds are automatically added to a member of each tribe. The players not holding weight get to decide which opposing tribe member gets more weight every five minutes, but it's not exactly a game of strategic brilliance– you just put all of the weight on the strongest guy; once he falls, you focus on the second strongest, etc. Ultimately, it's a fun, tough challenge that adds much appreciated variety into the challenge rotation each time it appears. 

3/5

Pirate Prison Break Physical Race / Skill

For Survivor's "first ever three tribe challenge," the first six eliminated contestants are invited back to the show to compete in a Survivor: Thailand challenge. Of course, the stakes are a bit higher than that— the Outcasts, as they're called, compete against the Drake and Morgan tribes, in order to earn opportunities to vote each other back into the game. As far as my opinions on the Outcasts Twist go, I think it's... fine, I guess, but what we are really looking at here is the challenge itself. As I mentioned, this is the same as Thailand's "Jail Break" challenge, but with a few small changes. Instead of the entire tribe working together from the get go, each tribe begins with one person who needs to gradually rescue the others, very similarly to the  "Shipwrecked" challenge from Borneo. In Thailand, everyone had to dig under the cage at the end of the challenge, but this time, there are multiple cages trapping smaller groups of tribemates, and the rescuers have to dig to get to each one; essentially, there is a lot more digging this time. We still have the classic "tie sticks together to retrieve a key" element, which of course, is what really defines this challenge. Another small thing is at the beginning, the initial rescuer has to race out in the other direction to get a flag, something I never really understood the point of other than giving certain tribes a tiny advantage out of the gate. While I appreciate all of the changes, there's a part of me that feels like they made an unnecessarily complicated version of a challenge that worked very well largely due to its simple but effective concept. It doesn't play out in a particularly exciting way; the Outcasts win, not by a big amount but I wouldn't call it close either. This challenge is... alright.

2/5 

Keel Hauling Physical Race

Whenever a challenge is based on some sort of ancient torture method, you know you're in for a treat. In this challenge, the pirate torture of being "tied to a rope and being dragged underneath the boat"  is replicated. Probst explains, "if the sharks didn't get you, the barnacles would certainly cut you up." Thankfully, the Survivor production decided to tone the torture down a little bit for this challenge so that no one would die, and it ends up being a very great, unique physically demanding challenge. You essentially have to complete laps by going underneath the platform, dragging yourself across with a rope, then back out of the water, run across the platform, jump back into the water, repeat. I've mentioned before that I don't like it as much when they run challenges in heats where the best players move on, competing on the same course again, but I think it works in this case, because each round goes by pretty quickly, and this isn't a challenge that I ever get bored of watching. It's a very good one.

4/5

Mixed Nuts Mental

Here is this season's rendition of "Survivor Quiz Show," and if you ask me, this is the worst version so far. The trivia questions are fine, the problem is that once again, the "coconut-chop" format is used for an Immunity Challenge, something I've complained about now for the fourth season in a row. Ryan is the first person eliminated from the challenge without any deliberation, and later that night, Ryan is unanimously voted out, just like what happened in Survivor: Thailand. This is even worse than Thailand thought. At least in that season, the challenge was done at night time among a beautifully lit set, and to eliminate someone, you snuffed their torch. This season takes the most boring approach, possibly this format has ever seen, where all you do is place a coconut in someone's bin. After Ryan is out, the rest of the challenge plays out interestingly enough, but I can't get over that production still didn't learn from a mistake they had already made before. It's probably worth noting that in this version, each person has five lives instead of three.

2/5

Killer Skill

This is a very interesting one- here's how it works: Each person shoots blowdarts at a target; each player has a color on the target. First, you have to shoot your own target to become a Killer, and then you get to shoot other people's targets to take away their lives and eliminate them. It's based on a darts game of the same name; as far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with pirate or Panamanian culture, it's just a game that someone on the challenge team enjoyed enough to base a Survivor challenge around. I have to say, it's definitely interesting. I'm not sure exactly if it works very well, but I can sort of appreciate its one-off appearance here. I'm sure this game is a blast when played among established darts players, but when you ask a bunch of people who mostly have little experience with blow darts, you end up with what sort of feels like a crapshoot where no one does anything with intention. Even if everyone here was a blow darts master, this should be a Reward Challenge, not an Immunity Challenge, for the exact same reason that coconut-chop style challenges should never be used for Immunity. Rupert goes home in this episode, and you can make an argument that he had no real chance to save himself in the Immunity Challenge.

2/5

What Do You Make Of This? Mental

I don't like this one. It's really just "what if anagrams was a Survivor challenge?" If this were to appear in a modern season, I think I could respect it a little bit more because it would offer some variety to the mostly physical challenge rotation, but challenge variety is not a problem that Survivor: Pearl Islands has; this is just not very interesting to watch, a lot like the challenge in Survivor: Africa where they just had everyone do a Word Scramble, but without any kind of added twist. Much like in Marquesas' "Jungle Relay" challenge, Jeff makes a rare hosting mistake here when he mistakenly awards Burton the win, who had actually spelt the word "liaison" incorrectly. Production doesn't realize this until after everyone has already left, and they have to do a whole new round, which just feels really awkward, but of course, it's not the challenge's fault. In the reunion show, it is revealed that this challenge was a 14 year old girl's idea, but let's be objective here— this is not one of Survivor: Pearl Islands' better challenges. Just for fun, I'd like to point out that also at the reunion, Jeff jokes that this is the cheapest challenge they had ever done, but I don't think that's true; those boards and letters still had to be custom made- Fallen Comrades was definitely cheaper for them to make, as well as some other early trivia challenges.

1/5

Musket Love Skill

Before I get into this one, I do think it's worth pointing out that I think this is overkill. This is the fourth "use a weapon to hit a target" challenge we've seen this season, and it's too much. It doesn't feel like good pacing. Even if it's just to fit the pirate theme, they should have at least moved "Killer" to a different season in order to space this stuff out better. That's certainly not a knock against this challenge though, as it didn't get to choose what other challenges would appear in its season. Still, I think ideally you want one or two of these a season; perfect for a bit of challenge variety, but not so much that that variety goes away. I will say, this is probably my favorite of the four we see this season though. Again with the fun pirate stuff, each tribe member shoots "traditional pirate muskets" in an attempt to strike their three targets. The first to do so wins Immunity. It's more simple, but exciting fun.

3/5

Corks And Keys Physical Race

I think that this is a great challenge that we have sadly only seen this one time. It's another one of those very simple but very good ideas: Each person fills their canteen with seawater, walks across a balance beam, pours the water into a tube, and repeats, until the key in the tube rises to the top. Once you get the key, you can move on to the second stage, and then the third— there are a total of five keys. This idea sort of harkens back to a challenge from Survivor: Marquesas called "Coconut Juice," which also had a tube that was too narrow to reach into, but everything else about this challenge is quite different from that. It ends up being very close; I like it a lot, and I'm surprised it was only seen once.

4/5

Tribal Draft Mental

I don't like this at all. This is one of the most unfair things I have ever seen on Survivor. Basically, we are going to do "Survivor Quiz Show," again, but this time, the jury is going to compete too as one unit (wait, what?!), and if they win, no one in the game gets Immunity (HUH?!). Keep in mind, this is at the Final FOUR, arguably the second most important Immunity Challenge in the game. I genuinely don't know what production was thinking here— is there any suspense to this challenge at all? Who do you think is going to win, one of the four individual competitors who have been starving and mentally exhausted for the last 37 days, or the jury, who have all been well fed and together, outnumber the amount of actual players still in the game??? The only reason this isn't getting a 1/5 is because the producers decided to make one of the questions be "the best way to avoid shark attacks is to..." with the answer being "don't go in the water," which is by far, the best trivia question this show has ever asked, and probably, ever will.

2/5

Set Adrift Endurance

Survivor: Pearl Islands' Final Immunity Challenge is good— really good. This isn't even a new idea, this is taken straight from Marquesas'  Merge challenge, but they fixed all of the issues I had with that version; what we have here is a spectacular, purely willpower-based challenge, and oh boy, does it play out beautifully. This is the challenge where the show's biggest villain, arguably of all time, is finally defeated by the season's biggest underdog, Lil the scoutmaster, who no one expected to make it anywhere near the end of the game. I can't imagine how many families cheered at home when they first watched this season, as Lil finally beats Fairplay after nearly three hours of a clearly agonizing challenge, another allusion to pirate torture where pirates would be set adrift to die at sea. And this exchange– truly spectacular:

(Lil to Jon) "You know what, I do aerobics."

(Jon) "Okay."

(Lil) "My knees are great."

(Jon) "Okay."

(Lil) "These are called SQUATS in aerobics."

(Jon) "Alright."

(Jeff to Jon) "I think Lil just said 'Game On.'"

(Jon to Jeff) "I think Lil just said 'Game OVER.'"

AMAZING. ICONIC. What else do I even have to say? We all know what this challenge's score is going to be, let's just get to it!

5/5