
Pearl Islands Episode 2: To Quit, Or Not To Quit
The episode starts off somberly for our beloved Skinny Ryan. The show is basically telling us, “don’t get too attached to this guy”. Ryan is unable to sleep, he’s thirsty and feeling weak (really he is mostly just weak in general). Basically they kept him around last time because Nicole shot herself in the foot but if Ryan isn’t able to prove himself during the next couple of challenges, his ass is firmly on the hot seat.
Over at Drake, we get everybody’s favorite type of scenes: Rupert fishing and providing. This episode firmly establishes that Rupert is going for the prototype to Ozzy Lusth’s game of “vote me out and you will starve”. I like to call the “Fat Ozzy”. In fairness to Rupert, he does do a very good job this season in terms of feeding his tribe pretty much daily. For some reason, Rupert has the innate ability to be really good at catching fish and it arouses the hell out of him.
By this point, we are also already seeing that Rupert is very possessive of his fishing and his fishing tools. He refers to the Hawaiian Sling as “my spear” whenever Shawn or Burton want to use it. Rupert is like the alpha guy at a club who stares at you for even looking at his girl except the girl in this case is a pointy sticky you use to stab fish with.

We get to the reward challenge and Jeff gets to introduce one of the most pointless twists the show has ever had: the hidden treasure chest. Essentially, both tribes have a buried treasure somewhere at camp. Each time a tribe wins reward, they get a piece of the map they can use to find the treasure. There are three pieces in total which means that Drake will have their full map in three reward challenges. For now, players and the audience are left to wonder and dream of what could be hidden in that treasure. We will get to the amazing bounty in a few episodes.
The challenge is essentially a “race to put random pieces in a sunken chest and then swim it out to shore” challenge. It’s been established that Skinny Ryan needs to do well in this challenge and prove himself so he decides to be first member to go for Morgan. He races out to the water against Burton and… promptly struggles terribly. He gets lapped by Burton and Shawn before swimming back to shore. Immediately, Drake has a huge lead on Morgan and it isn’t really ever close. Drake wins.

What’s most fun about the tribal reward challenges is that each time, the winning team gets to pick someone from their tribe to go loot an item from the other side. Drake chooses Sandra to be the inaugural pillager and it is an element in which she thrives. She shows up cockily on Morgan’s beach, happy to cause some chaos. When she’s asked about how the tribe is doing, Sandra makes sure to highlight how many things they got at the village and how much they are prospering.

As Drake had given her a few items to look for, Sandra chooses to take Morgan’s tarp. Conveniently, the tarp was the base for Morgan’s shelter’s roof and they tell Sandra to get it off herself. This is a pretty big mistake because Sandra does not give a damn about how she is going to get that thing down. She essentially destroys Morgan’s entire shelter as Tijuana, Osten and Savage try not to lose their shit.

In her typical Sandra way, she gets in one last jab when she is leaving with Morgan’s tarp telling them, “you guys sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite and no hard feelings”. As if she gets to decide if Morgan is allowed to be angry at her for destroying their shelter and taking their roof. It is so fantastically vintage Sandra and it makes me laugh every time.
It’s also around this time that we start to really get Osten’s “quitter” edit. He gives a confessional where he tells the audience his body is giving out and he is considering just leaving. Osten also mentions it to Savage and Tijuana who both realize they need Osten around for his physical strength at camp and in challenges. For the time being, Osten decides to stick around but it won’t be the last of the “will he, won’t he” with him.
Back at Drake, Shawn decides to go out to fish and manages to lose the tip of the spear. When he tells Rupert, Rupert nearly has a stroke. He starts aggressively ripping out branches in a tree trunk as he tries desperately not to flip out and punch Shawn in the throat. He goes on this long diatribe both in confessionals and at camp about how “this is why I should be the only fisherman on the tribe. You lost my spear. Blah blah blah”. Because he was loved back then, Rupert’s edit was never seen as holier than thou for most but coming back with four seasons’ worth of ol’ Rupe, it’s a lot easier to see why he was difficult to live with.

We do get a good quote from Krista here about Shawn and his general behaviour around camp, “Shawn is the biggest puss I have ever met in my entire life”. Delivered in that patented Krista voice of hers.
So Shawn and Rupert decide to go out and look for the head of the spear. If they don’t find it, Rupert might actually murder Shawn in front of all the cameras. Thankfully for him, Rupert does somehow manage to canvas the water and find wherever Shawn had lost the spear. Cue shots of Rupert yelling in ecstasy and basically making out with it. Shawn of course hears Rupert’s orgasmic screams and asks him where it was to which Rupert replies with the immortal line:
IN THE OCEAN!!!

Next up is immunity. It’s another sea/sand challenge and there isn’t much noteworthy from it other than Drake wins yet again. It’s a little closer this time around than in the reward challenge but still not all that competitive. Skinny Ryan doesn’t stand out in a bad way, which is good but also doesn’t show himself to be a valuable asset, which is bad.
Time to decide who from Morgan will be the second to go. Osten again wants to quit. He is obsessed with getting pneumonia and is convinced he will get it on the island. Now to be fair, he did sell all his clothes at the village for extra things for the tribe but that was his own dumb decision. Now Osten is cold, miserable and he wants out but Savage isn’t feeling that. As we definitely know by now, Savage is not a fan of small and weak-ish males and since he has previously described Skinny Ryan as a limp noodle, I would bet Ryan falls in that category. He begs Osten to stick around so they can vote out Ryan.
Meanwhile, Osten has also told Lill that he wants to go because his body is done. For all the crap Lillian gets throughout the season and she will get even more from me, she can also be a very astute player. She tells the audience in a confessional that Osten doesn’t want to go home because his body is done. He wants to quit because he’s losing and he’s not used to it. He doesn’t know how to handle it. Lill isn’t stupid. She’s just annoying.

At tribal council, Jeff tries to get Lill to talk about what the tribe is doing wrongly but she won’t go there. Despite being blown out twice in a row, she believes that Morgan is fine the way they are and that they just have to fish more. If Osten is obsessed with pneumonia, early Lill will be obsessed with fishing as we will see in the next episode. She refuses to vote out Ryan over someone who has asked her to go but it doesn’t matter because everyone else sends Ryan home.
Even though he wasn’t around for very long, Skinny Ryan is pretty important in my eyes. He is the set-up man for Morgan’s lack of success, highlighting why things go south so quickly. He is also a big tool in demonstrating Savage’s lack of control and leadership on his clusterfuck of a tribe. Ryan is also the prototype to John Cochran like Rupert is to Ozzy. He isn’t very good in challenges, is small in stature and is a superfan. While Cochran was definitely more dynamic, Skinny Ryan was also a good narrator who was able to get his thoughts out fairly easily and in a well-structured manner. If he had been able to survive the first few votes like Cochran did in South Pacific, he could have turned into a fairly big character. Instead he becomes a footnote in Survivor history known more for his buff at the Outcast competition.
Oh and this is really the first time we get a Lill Face TM.

Rupert line of the episode: Not even a question, it’s “IN THE OCEAN!” for his delivery and excitement over saving the love of his life from the bottom of the sea.
Episode MVP: It won’t be her last but Sandra’s performance when looting Morgan’s tribe is too good to ignore. She is so transparently mocking them as she fakes nice and Savage trying not to lose his cool on her is amazing.

