Welcome to the Purple Rock Podcast’s coverage of Australian Survivior: Brains V Brawn II. I assume that with word of the upcoming Australia vs the World season going around and with the Golden God David Genet holding court alongside Parvati over on Deal or No Deal Island, there are some newbies to Club Aussie Survivor this season.
For the newcomers, the good news is that Australian Survivor is on a white-hot hot streak, with the two previous seasons being arguably the two best seasons of the whole franchise (and I’ll be making that argument if I ever get around to updating the International Survivor season ranking). All else being equal I expect this heat-check season to suffer some reversion to the mean, but a slight dip in quality would still mean a fantastic season.
The bad news (if you already have a life) is that Australian Survivor is an absolute firehose, with three 90- to 120-minute episodes per week. They air Monday through Wednesday night in Australia, or in the wee small hours of the morning Monday through Wednesday in the US. Avoid online spoilers accordingly.
For the AU Survivor regulars, I would give you my thoughts about the cast but I’ve paid absolutely no attention to the pre-season coverage, so I’m going in cold (same with Season 48).
If you really want some contestant profiles, they’re here.
As usual, a weekly comment post will go up on Sunday night, with separate comment threads for each episode to help prevent spoilers.
For those outside of Australia in need of assistance in watching AU Survivor, there are a number of dodgy ways to do it but also a more-or-less aboveboard way (as always, I beg the powers-that-be to put AU Survivor on US Paramount+ or something similar—take my money!). Although with this method you do have to sit through Australian commercials.
1. Install a VPN on your computer if you don’t already have one
2. Set the region to Australia
3. Go to 10Play , the streaming home of Australian Survivor
4. Sign up for a free 10Play account (click on “Sign In” and then “Sign Up”)
5. Enjoy!
Warning to newbies that the outcome of last season will probably be spoiled in the opening minutes of this season.
Assistant Dragon Slayer began watching Survivor in 2013 with Survivor: Caramoan but continued to watch the show anyway. He is up to 65 seasons and counting (47 US, nine Australia, five South Africa, two New Zealand, two Japan). So there.
Favorite player from each country: Cirie Fields (US), Kirby Bentley (Australia), Santoni Engelbrecht (South Africa), Lisa Stanger (New Zealand), Sakiko Sekiguchi (Japan) [and Maryanne Oketch (Canada)]