Because I do Survivor re-watches all of the time and in the spirit of #throwbackthursday, I have decided to do a weekly article where I go back and watch an episode of an old season for a segment we will be calling Survivor Déjà vu. The first season to go through the Survivor Déjà vu process will be a legendary one because I like to ease to things, Survivor: Pearl Islands.
This season as a whole is universally considered among the best in the show’s history. It has a great cast with some legendary characters, an amazing setting and theme and the storyline develops beautifully throughout the episodes. It’s always a treat to go back and watch Pearl Islands again so let’s get to it…
Pearl Islands Episode 1: Beg, Barter, Steal
Before I even start talking about the episode itself, allow me to say this. The music in this episode, and on this season in general, is amazing. I have written before about the impact that music has on the show as a whole and Pearl Islands is a perfect example of how it betters everything. Right away as the season begins, the show pumps out some very pirate and sea themed tunes that really throws the audience into the action.
The opening segment is cool enough, Jeff Probst doesn’t do anything drastic like stand on top of an active volcano or hang off a helicopter, he’s just on a boat narrating. The rest of the cast are in the lower decks of the same boat, thinking they are about to shoot some promotional footage for the season. Little do they know, the game is about to begin with nothing but the clothes off their back.
From there, Jeff gathers everyone on the top deck to tell them about the twist. We find out that Nicole Delma is not wearing a bra which Jeff makes a pervy comment about because it wouldn’t be a vintage season without some weird Jeff action. Of note, Osten Taylor had with him two big bottles of liquor that he must give away. Did he bring those as some sort of luxury items? Did he really think production would let him sneak liquor? Might have kept him warm at night considering he is about to stupidly sell all of his clothes.
After the two tribes have been split up, Jeff gives them 100 Balboas (not Rocky or Rupert’s future pet) and tells them to spend it at the nearby village to find supplies to last the 39 days. From there, the game begins in one of the most open-ended starts to a season ever. It’s fantastic. Andrew Savage nearly trips on the boat trying to get his Morgan tribe organized and both sides start jumping off the boat to get their running shoes that Jeff has just thrown in the water. Right away we get a sense that Osten may not be built for this game because he tells us that he is not a very strong swimmer.
People often say that Pearl Islands has the best premiere of any Survivor season. I agree with that sentiment and would argue that a lot of it has to do with the village scene. This is fantastic television through and through. Immediately, the Morgan tribe is already a clusterfuck of ineptitude. The girls split off together from the group. Ryan Opray immediately goes dashing into the village with nothing in his possession, frantically searching to rent a boat to later get to their camp. When he finds the people who run the boats, he realizes he has no money and is thus useless.
For their part, the Drake tribe is shown as much more organized. After swimming into shore, Rupert Boneham is exhausted and decides to sit down and watch his tribe’s shoes. Morgan decides to just leave their own shoes next to Rupert and desert them. Since Rupert loves to adopt his season’s themes, he immediately goes into pirate mode and steals all of Morgan’s shoes to sell off in the village. Like the good production pet that he is, he takes the time to push the theme some more with his quote, “pirates steal, pirates pillage. Pirates take advantage”. Such a good boy that Rupert.
It is also here that Rupert gives us his classic quote, “I will lie cheat and steal to win this game… I stole for Da Drake!” Of course, everybody remembers the second part of that quote. I have bolded the first part because it sounds more like something Jon Dalton would say, not the heroic and honorable Rupert. Considering the image he tries to push of himself as the ultimate good guy throughout this season and his other three, this is not a sentence I would ever think of Rupert saying.
While da Drake get organized, Morgan keeps up the chaos. This is where Osten stupidly sells all of his clothes except for his underwear. I’m not sure if he thought he wouldn’t need them but Panama tends to get pretty wet and when the sun goes down, sleeping on a beach can be a cold experience. Unfortunately for Osten, he does not have the foresight to think of this. During this scene, Osten also takes the time to tell the women that old men can be horny and that they should flash their boobs to get better deals if need be. Always a charmer that Osten Taylor.
One of my favorite things about this village scene is a small moment that doesn’t even have dialogue. As they use footage of the villagers throughout to sort of transition between scenes, we see a few seconds of what is definitely an actual god damn cockfight. Survivor doesn’t want us to see Skupin murdering a pig but a sanctioned fight between two chickens? That’s all good in their book.
Of course, for many people the pinnacle of the village scene is Sandra Diaz-Twine and the lady the fan base has now named Corazon. Sandra goes into a store with Trish Dunn to buy some supplies. As it so happens, Sandra speaks Spanish fluently and is able to negotiate a great deal for what they are buying. Corazon tells Sandra that she will give them what they want for Trish’s eyes which Sandra then translates to Trish. Like any human being, Trish takes it as a joke/compliment and thanks Corazon but from the way Sandra sees it, Corazon is truly enamored by Trish and wants to keep her in her hut.
In the same store, Osten, Savage and Tijuana Bradley nearly start a riot. None of the Morgans have a Spanish speaker so trying to negotiate things becomes a little harder. They try to take a pot from Corazon which she insists they have not paid for. Tijuana gets real angry and starts accusing Corazon and her associates of stealing from them. She really gets in these people’s faces and a diplomatic incident seems almost too close to happening. Thankfully, Tijuana and co. eventually pay up a little more cash for their pot and avoid being captured and eventually murdered by the villagers for theft.
Back to Sandra and her bad-assery, she stumbles upon what looks like a community BBQ. She negotiates her gold chain for the entire BBQ including the aluminum foil, their cutlery and dishes. Basically anything that isn’t bolted down, Sandra takes from them. Hopefully that chain isn’t cubic zirconia but knowing what we do about Sandra now, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was. When she brings the entire collection of food and goods back to Rupert, he hits us with a deep “oh my god!” which really made me realize that Rupert is just the male Amber Brkich.
It’s also fun to note knowing how the season eventually turns out that Jonny Fairplay is floored by how great Sandra is at the village. He has a confessional telling the viewers how much of an asset she was for the team and how much they were able to get because of her. This is all true but I would bet to wager that it’s the last time Jonny is going to have anything good to say about Sandra.
From there, the village scene starts to wrap up. Morgan rushes to their boat early because they are just worried about making good time. They actually leave with money in their pockets which angers Ryan Shoulders, AKA Skinny Ryan, who would like to get more supplies. No time for that according to Osten and they rush off to their boat. In contrast, Drake takes all the time in the world, basically shows up to their boat having wiped the village clean of any useful goods and probably have to leave some stuff behind to avoid being too heavy for the boat.
Similarly, the arrival to their respective camps are completely different. As Skinny Ryan, the first true Survivor superfan to be cast on the show, points out, seeing their tribe flag for the first time should be a reason to celebrate. The Morgans do none of that. Immediately Osten starts mindlessly running along the beach to… find where they should build their shelter?
I will say that up to this point, the MVPs from a television perspective on Morgan have to be Skinny Ryan and Osten. They both carry the heavy load of confessionals for their tribe in this episode. Ryan is a surprisingly good and witty narrator. Same with Osten, the guy is brazen, cocky, and into himself but he really does a great job of narrating what he’s thinking.
On the Drake tribe, as they arrive on their beach they come together for a group cheer. If the editing hasn’t beaten you over the head enough with it already, the Drake tribe is the good team that you should be cheering for and the Morgan tribe is the special kid in your 5th grade class that always ate their glue.
As we see the Drake tribe start to get to work building their camp, we get an early scene of Sandra’s intuition. As we know now, Sandra has a keen sense of perception and is almost never wrong about her observations. Here, she quickly notices that Burton Roberts only shares his coconut with Michelle Tesauro and Shawn Cohen. She quickly notes that this is a form of exclusion for the rest of the tribe and files it away in her head for later use.
Because the editors really need to point out how the tribes could not be any more different, we see that Drake spends their first night getting drunk on wine and Morgan spends it sleeping on sand getting bit in the ass by crabs. Clue number two that Osten may not be fit for living in nature: he is afraid of pretty much every single creature and noise on the beach. Right back at Drake, the drunker Jon gets, the more Jon gets loud and, in his opinion funny, but to some of the tribe, annoying. Especially to Sandra who thinks Jon is obnoxious for, all of things, cursing. This is the woman who got the opening confessional of the season and dropped a “shit”-bomb in there.
It’s also fun to note the relationship between Jon and Rupert at this point. Rupert sees Jon as one of the kids he mentors, brash and loud but ultimately just a small kid. Jon is no threat to Rupert and he doesn’t see him as the potentially dangerous gamer that Jonny Fairplay will eventually turn out to be. The only person who really picks up on Jon being bad to have around is Sandra because once again, Sandra is the queen of perception.
A fun note for the next day is that Rupert tells the audience that his “dress jeans” are hurting his junk because they are wet. Because of course Rupert owns a pair of dress jeans, I can’t think of a more Rupert like thing to say. To remedy the situation, he makes himself a dress out of Christa Hastie’s clothes that he will wear for the rest of the season. He also gets into a little “fish-off” with Burton when Burton returns to camp having caught a fish. As if he was biologically unable to stop himself from proving his fishing skills, Rupert goes out and catches a handful of fish more than Burton.
It’s only at the 42 minute mark of the episode that we even get a mention of a challenge. This is a trademark of an older season. It focuses a lot more on the camp life and the dynamics of the two tribes, allowing us to get to know these people, before throwing them into the fire of a challenge. The first challenge is one where they have to drag a heavy cannon across multiple obstacles and I have to say, it is very thrilling. It’s close up until the end. Morgan first catches up to Drake’s big lead but then get stuck, allowing Drake to come from behind and snag a win.
Part of what makes the challenge so tense is the lack of narration from Jeff. He will add his voice here and there when it makes sense to in the action. Otherwise he lets the players kind of talk amongst themselves and the editors do a brilliant job of adding appropriate music in the background as the intensity ramps up towards a great finish.
Of course, it’s in this challenge where Osten’s boxers keep falling off and he shows off his rear end. In a show of support, Savage and Ryno also drop their pants and we get the famous shot of the guys from the back and the caption “Morgan behind” thrown in by the editors. That is an amusing joke by itself but it’s actually crazy the amount of screen time devoted to guys dropping their shorts after the challenge is done. Jeff even later brings it up at tribal as a reason they might have lost the challenge which really doesn’t make any sense.
After the challenge comes the traditional “decide who we are booting” deliberations. Savage claims that it’s looking like it might be the “limp noodle Ryan” which has always made me laugh because of how douche Savage can be. Lillian Morris, the forever boy scout, knows that she’s also on the chopping block and is looking to find a way to avoid it. She’s already started being mopey and sad, a Lill trademark throughout the season. Skinny Ryan tells her to only give up “when your torch goes out, give up. Cause it’s over then”. This is some grade A foreshadowing for Lill and her faith with the Outcasts twist.
When Nicole goes to Lill with an offer to team up and vote out Tijuana, Lill sees her chance. She goes straight to Savage and tells him about the conversation they just had and how Nicole suggested they vote out “Tijuanda”. Despite struggling with people’s names, Lill is a better player than given credit for. She displays here by not doing the easy thing which would be agreeing with Tijuana and probably going home first. Instead she weaponises the information she is given and uses it to point the finger right at Nicole.
It’s often said that the first vote just happens to be whoever is brought up first. Nobody wants it to be them. It’s like everybody is employing the “anybody but me” Sandra strategy for a round because no one wants to be the first out. Lill is able to point out a target that pleases the entire tribe and Nicole goes home 8–1. She is not a memorable part of her own boot episode. She wasn’t annoying, too loud or inept at competitions. She just happened to go to the worst possible person to target someone else, the one who will spend the entire season just flipping votes willy nilly and it backfired on her. She also didn’t wear a bra. That essentially becomes Nicole’s Survivor legacy.
With Nicole gone, the premiere episode to Survivor: Pearl Islands concludes. It’s an amazing opening course for a season that is only going to continue to get better until it reaches its climax. I’m extremely excited to write about the entire season each week so make sure to come back next Thursday for episode two, To Quit or Not to Quit.
Rupert line of the episode: There’s already a goldmine of Rupert quotes from this episode but I will have to go with: “I didn’t know they made such a animal”.
MVP of the episode: Sandra is definitely in contention but let me give to Skinny Ryan since he is not long for this world and he does a great job of setting up Morgan as an incredibly inept tribe. Something tells me Sandra will get her day in the sun.
