Got through the pre-merge of SA: Malaysia and it's actually pretty good so far and I'm enjoying it a lot more than Santa Carolina and even Maldives
It's a very old school season (but in good quality on YouTube!) where alliances and votes are driven both by tribe strength and interpersonal conflict and it's glorious. There's been exactly one scene of an alliance getting formed and the confessional was literally like "lol we aligned but idk why we did, it just happened"
Iban is okayish as a tribe. Kind of boring and their two boots have been all about tribe strength, but I'm keeping an eye on LISA, who I actually kind of hated in the first episode? She was, like, boldly not doing ANY work in the premiere and boasting about it but wasn't really doing it in a fun way, but then after surviving a 4-3-1 vote she's like "
I have to start working *picks up a coconut and brings it back to camp* guys aren't you proud of my contribution?!" and all of the sudden I'm finding her a lot funnier and loving her as a worthless cockroach who is starting to become more in on the joke
I will say though that I don't feel like they've really done a good job flushing out the dynamics. Angie, Grant, Viwe, and Lisa immediately formed an alliance "for no reason" in the premiere but then Lisa voted against Grant according to Wiki (the end credits only show the votes against the boot which is annoying) and Irshaad is voting with Angie/Grant/Viwe? But then by episode 3 it seems like it's Angie/Grant/Lisa vs. Irshaad/Viwe with Mandla and Lorette as swings in the middle? I don't know, I just don't like heading into a tribe swap and not really understanding..... anything about that tribe's dynamics.
Bajau though...
holy **** let's just take in the following events:
-Hein and Dyke immediately proclaim themselves as Bush Experts and make a bunch of promises to bring in food and shelter and fire like nothing
-Elsie struggles to swim in the first Challenge and Dyke openly bitches at camp about how they have two black girls who can't swim, prompting Elsie to yell at him and read him for filth
-Hein and Dyke don't actually provide on any of the promises of food and fire and shelter that they promised and then are ignoring suggestions that people like Amanda and Elsie make about things like preparing to eat the fish (they end up being correct)
-After losing an Immunity Challenge, Elsie holds a tribe meeting bc there's no teamwork in the tribe but Hein says that she's lazy, leading to a fight between Dyke/Hein and Amanda/Elsie
-This leads to an even bigger fight between Hein and Elsie, leading to this top tier confessional: "My mother didn't raise me to be STUPID and whatever I say that comes out of my mouth should never be stupid to anybody. So as far as [Hein]'s concerned he can
flips middle fingers at the camera go SUCK ON THIS cause I'm not done with him
wipes hands clean for an extended period of time I'll be done with him when I'm out of this place, I'm not done with him"
like......
this was also immediately followed up by her saying if she was allowed to fight on the island she'd **** somebody up alol.
(I also had a fun image but it's on Discord and this forum is dumb and has the word banned in URLs?!)
-Amanda/Angela/Elsie team up with Nichal and Rijesh to take out Nicola (who is a Dyke/Hein lackey) but not before a TC where Angela calls out Dyke and Hein for not following through on any of their promises around camp, Amanda calls Dyke obnoxious and dismissive and bossy to his face, Elsie explicitly accuses Dyke of saying racist **** against black people, and Nichal saying that if this was the real world Dyke would've been bashed by now
-Dyke calls everyone wankers and Elsie obnoxiously celebrates that she's not going anywhere and she'll go when she's ready
as they're leaving Tribal
-Dyke tries to clear the air with everybody the next day but Angela shuts him down and says that actions speak louder than words and he and Hein haven't acted on anything they promised
-On Day 7, Hein
finally starts fire for the tribe but is mainly motivated because Nichal offered to pay him R500 if he did it, leading to a ****ing hilarious scene where Angela is parading up and down the beach trying to get each person to contribute R100 to give to Hein when he finally makes fire
Legitimately one of my favorite tribes across all of Survivor I've seen. These people largely hated each other for personal reasons and were SO petty about it, and whenever they tried to patch things up it never worked because these people have the worst conflict resolution skills ever
I'm so sad that they're getting broken up by a tribe swap because these people are all insane and could've carried the show on their own. They basically were already?
So yeah, I'm enjoying this season a lot which is a fun surprise. HOWEVER, it's only been three episodes so who knows?