Survivor: Pearl Islands

Survivor: Pearl Islands is the seventh installment of the popular television reality show Survivor. It was filmed in 2003 and debuted in the United States on CBS on September 18, 2003.

The show takes place on the Pearl Islands, off the coast of Panama, and was mostly themed around pirate culture. The two original tribes were Drake (named for Francis Drake) and Morgan (named for Henry Morgan). Eventually the two were merged into the Balboa tribe (named for Vasco Núñez de Balboa).

Survivor: Pearl Islands was the most watched since Survivor: The Australian Outback, in part due to unique twists (Outcasts, Looting, Buried Treasure) and colorful and memorable contestants (Rupert Boneham, Jon Dalton). In some cases, the official title Survivor: Pearl Islands is referred to as Survivor: Pearl Islands - Panama (as indicated by CBS and the opening titles of the season)

On the very first day, the castaways, who were earlier been told to dress up for a promotional event for the show on board a ship, were shocked to learn that they were to be marooned with only the clothes they were wearing. They were then given 100 Panamanian balboas which they could exchange, along with any personal items such as earrings, gold chains and sneakers, for supplies at a nearby fishing village on the first day. While in the village, Rupert sat down to take a pause with his supply raft. The Morgan pulled up beside him and left their raft unguarded, thus giving him an idea common in pirate culture: stealing the supplies. Meanwhile, as Sandra Diaz-Twine communicated with the locals in their own language for extra supplies (one even asked for teammate Trish Dunn's eyes), the Morgans messed up heavily.

Young and muscular African-American Osten Taylor ended up bartering off all his clothing except his boxer shorts. On day 3, while participating in the tribes' first immunity challenge, Taylor decided to take off his boxer shorts, which had become extremely loose due to rapid weight loss in the preceding days, and complete the challenge in the nude to eliminate the trouble of having to keep his shorts up. His two alliance partners, Andrew Savage and Ryan Opray, decided to honour that alliance and so stripped down as well. Ultimately, however, their efforts went unrewarded when their tribe, Morgan, lost the challenge.

Burton Roberts made a significant error at a critical point. Having seen three of the Morgans eliminated and none of the Drakes yet at Tribal Council, he encouraged his tribe to throw an immunity challenge. (Boneham did not appreciate this idea but felt bringing it up against the majority view would be counterproductive.) However, he failed to consider the consequences of this decision and ended up being eliminated in place of the player he had in mind.

Osten Taylor was not voted off. He became the first contestant in Survivor history to quit the game, saying that his health was more important to him than the million dollar prize. While other players had quit in essence by asking their teammates to vote them off, Taylor's elimination was the first in which voting was foregone completely and host Jeff Probst simply accepted his resignation at Tribal Council. Taylor did agree to let his tribe vote him out, but Probst said this was not necessary.

Jon Dalton gained notoriety on the show when, in a challenge where the contestant's loved ones competed, he had his friend say that his grandmother had died. He did this in order to gain the others' pity and win the challenge, then continued to milk the lie for all its worth by always saying "I swear on my grandmother" when someone didn't believe him about something. In the reunion show that aired after the season finale, host Jeff Probst did a brief interview with Jon's grandmother, who was not only alive and well, but much younger and more attractive than many expected.

This series of Survivor had a surprise feature where the first six contestants voted off were given an opportunity to win their way back on to the show. Lillian Morris (who was originally the third person voted off) and Burton Roberts (who was the fourth) rejoined the contest in this manner, and were each given individual immunity at their first Tribal Council to allow them time to "integrate" back into their tribe. Known among Survivor fans as the Outcast twist, this feature was to cause huge controversy among Survivor fans and was also viewed as unfair by many of the contestants still in the game, notably Andrew Savage (which partly resulted in him being voted off immediately after Morris and Roberts rejoined the contest). Morris and Roberts became the first â€" and thus far, the only â€" contestants in Survivor history to be eliminated twice in the same season.

Survivor: Pearl Islands was released on DVD on February 7, 2006.

Contestants

		Challenges			Tribes		-	Episode Title	Air Date	Reward	Immunity	Voted Out	Original	Merged	Finish
Beg, Barter, Steal	2003-09-18	Drake	Nicole Delma	Morgan	Voted out 1st - Day 3
To Quit or Not to Quit	2003-09-25	Drake	Drake	Ryan Shoulders	Morgan	Voted out 2nd - Day 6
United We Stand, Divided We... ?	2003-10-02	Drake	Drake	Lillian Morris	Morgan1	Voted out 3rd - Day 91
Pick a Castaway... Any Castaway	2003-10-09	Drake	Morgan	Burton Roberts	Drake1	Voted out 4th - Day 121
Everyone's Hero	2003-10-16	Morgan	Morgan	Michelle Tesauro	Drake	Voted out 5th - Day 15
Me and My Snake	2003-10-23	Drake	Morgan	Trish Dunn	Drake	Voted out 6th - Day 18
What the...?, Part 1	2003-10-30	Outcast	Shawn Cohen	Drake	Voted out 7th - Day 19
				Osten Taylor	Morgan	Quit the game - Day 19
What the...?, Part 2	2003-11-06	Burton2	Andrew Savage	Morgan	Balboa	Voted out 8th - Day 21
Shocking! Simply Shocking!	2003-11-13	Rupert3	Rupert	Ryan Opray		Morgan	Voted out 9th - Day 24
Swimming With Sharks	2003-11-20	Jon4, Lill	Burton	Rupert Boneham		Drake	Voted out 10th - Day 27
The Great Lie	2003-11-26	Jon	Darrah5	Tijuana Bradley		Morgan	Voted out 11th - Day 30
Would You Be My Brutus Today?	2003-12-04	Darrah, Lill, Jon	Darrah	Christa Hastie		Drake	Voted out 12th - Day 33
Mutiny	2003-12-11	Burton	Darrah	Burton Roberts		Drake	Voted out 13th - Day 361
Flames and Endurance	2003-12-14	Jury6	Darrah Johnson	Morgan		Voted out 14th - Day 37
		Lill	Jon Dalton	Drake		Voted out 15th - Day 38
Reunion	2003-12-14	Lillian Morris	Morgan	Runner-up1
		Sandra Diaz-Twine	Drake	Sole Survivor

# Lillian Morris and Burton Roberts were brought back into the game on Day 20, so they are both listed as having placed in two different points in the game. The tribes they were briefly in upon their return were the same tribes they were originally in.# Burton won immunity, but gave it to Rupert during tribal council since it was no use to Burton since he and Lil already had immunity so they could intergrate back into the tribe.# Rupert won reward, but gave it to Burton.# Burton and Lill won reward. Burton gave Jon his reward, while Lill kept hers.# Burton originally won immunity and was stripped of it due to Jeff Probst not noticing a misspelled word. Because of this, a runoff between those not already eliminated was conducted with Darrah winning the immunity.# The immunity challenge was a trivia competition, and the five members of the Jury were allowed to compete as a team against the four remaining players. The Jury won immunity, meaning that none of the four remaining players had immunity for that vote.

Elimination Notes

* Nicole Delma - Voted out 7-1 due to excessive plotting and scheming. She was caught in quite a few lies, particularly in an attempt to eliminate Tijuana.
* Ryan Shoulders - Voted out 5-2 due to his weak physical condition and being outside the alliance.
* Lillian Morris - Voted out 5-1 due to losing a fishing hook and not being in the main alliance.
* Burton Roberts - Convinced the tribe to throw an immunity challenge. He wanted to get rid of Christa, but the tribe chose to boot him 5-2 when Jon turned on the Burton-Shawn-Michelle alliance, and John and Shawn voted with the Sandra-Christa-Trish alliance.
* (Morris and Roberts were voted back into the game on day 19)
*Michelle Tesauro - The departure of the strong Burton sent Drake into a challenge tailspin. Jon told Shawn at the previous council to vote for Burton so that Michelle would be the only remaining member who voted against Christa. Later, he singled her out for this. Michelle, weak and close to Burton, was voted out 6-1 because she failed to go along with Drake's plan to win the immunity challenge by having her, their best gross-food eater, pretend to be their worst so that the other tribe would pick her in a tie breaker.
*Trish Dunn - Trish decided to oust Rupert, feeling he was too powerful. Rupert was tipped off by ally Sandra, and convinced Shawn (the last member of the Burton/Michelle/Shawn alliance) to turn against Trish.
*Shawn Cohen - Both tribes lost a challenge to the Outcast Tribe comprised of the first 6 departed players; as a result, both tribes had to vote out a player. Drake voted out Shawn due to his friendship with Burton, whom they accurately believed would be voted back into the game.
*Osten Taylor - After long considering it, Osten chose to quit the game, on the grounds that his body was breaking down and his health was too important to him.
*Andrew Savage - Lill's return sparked Andrew's demise - as she was bitter about his choice to eliminate her. Upon the merge, Drake saw Andrew as a threat (due to his strength and leadership) and so they convinced Lill to join them. The vote was 6-4.
*Ryan Opray - Voted out 8-1 due to his physical strength and role in the Morgan alliance.
*Rupert Boneham - Jonny Fairplay and his ally Burton banded together with the final Morgan members Darrah and Tijuana. On a reward challenge, Jon managed to convince Lillian that Rupert was too big of a threat to keep in the game, and she voted with him.
*Tijuana Bradley - Voted out because she attempted to oust Burton. Instead, Jon turned the tables on her by using his dead grandmother lie to secure the votes of Christa and Sandra.
*Christa Hastie - Voted out due to the fact that she was thought by Jon and Burton to be the biggest physical threat to them left in the game.
*Burton Roberts - Sandra and Darrah convinced Lill to vote out challenge threat Burton 3-2.
*Darrah Johnson - Darrah was voted out 3-1 due to Jon instigating a fight between Lill and Darrah.
*Jon Dalton - Lillian won the final immunity, and decided to take Sandra because of her dislike for Jon.
*Lillian Morris - Roasted at the final Tribal Council for hypocrisy and hiding behind her Scout image, Lillian garnered the vote of Tijuana.
*Sandra Diaz-Twine - Perhaps due to her "tell-it-like-it-is" approach to the jury's questions - a stark contrast to the defensive responses from Lill - Sandra won the votes of Jon, Ryan, Rupert, Christa, Darrah and Burton.

External link

*Official CBS website