The team is given the word “pink”. Koopu associates it with the word “nipples”, raising his team’s eyebrows.
“I know nipples can be various colours and all different shades of pink,” Koopu explains afterwards. “I feel like my nipples are pink.”
Carmel Sepuloni sums it up best. Laughing nervously, she says, “That was weird.”
At Aihe, Wētā outcast Walker has also used her unappreciated brain power to notice the mysterious family tree in camp. A closer inspection reveals it’s the opposite of the one in her old camp. Excited, she calls the team over and they begin to piece it together.
They deduce a connection to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and that the buried treasure of the game must have something to do with the young, doomed lovers.
But there is no time for bards or brainstorming as they must head to the Team Face-Off. The challenge is an obstacle course mixed with a game of Telephone and spiced up with the inclusion of ice baths. The winning team gets to pit a rival player against their captain in a Captain’s Coup.
“We really want to shake up the status quo over there,” Aihe’s captain Millen Baird says. “We have to win.”
For Wētā, it is a loyalty test. They put newcomers Foliaki and Mea Motu into their four-person team along with Gaby Solomona and Koopu. Aihe sends out Baird, Bubbah, Janaye Henry and their new recruit Walker.
Aihe takes an early lead after Bubbah decodes the order of the mystery shapes and shoots away from Foliaki. She jumps into the ice bath where Walker is waiting and describes the shapes and their correct order. Walker looks puzzled but takes off, crawling through a tangled net to get to the waiting Baird.
Foliaki finally works it out, rushes to his ice bath and jumps in. But his descriptions of the order and the shapes leave Gaby Solomona “confused”.
As Foliaki attempts to clarify, Baird is swinging across the monkey bars and trying to remember Walker’s words. He plunges into his ice bath and passes the cryptic info to Henry. With Solomona tangled hopelessly in the crawl net, Aihe’s lead over Wētā increases.
Fumbling with her blocks, Henry eventually decodes “lips-shaped” as meaning “oval” and slaps down the final piece. She calls co-host Lance Savali over to verify.
“Aihe seem to think they have it correct,” he shouts. “They have not!”
They’re not sure where they’ve gone wrong. They begin yo-yoing back and forth, going over obstacles and hopping in and out of ice baths, to confer with each other and figure it out.
Meanwhile, the slow and steady Wētā call for a check.
“That is incorrect!” shouts Savali.
Almost immediately, Henry yells for another check.
“Aihe… wins!” Savali shouts to an eruption of cheers from the underdogs.
“I feel so good that we won. It shows that we’re still in the game even though we don’t look like the Avengers,” Henry smiles.
Tucking into their prize of kids’ party food, discussion turns to who they’ll pick to face Koopu. The threat of Koopu, Sepuloni and Spankie Jackzon’s string-pulling alliance is a tempting target. This is also on Wētā’s minds as they pick at their rice and beans. They decide to take control of their fate.
The team rallies behind Koopu’s captaincy, with Motu saying, “I’m happy just to throw it.”
But Aihe weren’t born yesterday. They know Wētā will throw it.
“It has to be JP,” Cullen muses. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else to not throw it.”
But Wētā knows Aihe knows they’re going to throw it and will be therefore be looking to nominate someone who won’t throw it. Both teams know that narrows it down to only one person – Foliaki. For his benefit, Sepuloni starts discussing the heavy consequences that await anyone thinking of betraying the group…
At the challenge, Baird does indeed call Foliaki to take on Koopu. “I’m going to do my hardest,” Foliaki states, leaving both Wētā and Aihe wondering where his allegiance lies.
The challenge is a race to stack four tower blocks with a topper on each using only their feet. Koopu quickly builds a solid lead but hits trouble when a topper falls between two of his towers. With only his feet to retrieve it, he slows down so as to be able to fish it out without knocking them over. Foliaki seizes the moment and begins catching up.
“I didn’t expect JP to be posing a real threat to Wairangi,” Sepuloni says as Foliaki finishes his final tower and Wētā realise he has broken the team deal.
They’re neck-and-neck, but Koopu inches ahead and places his fourth and final topper down. But it wibbles. Then it wobbles. Then it topples, taking a second topper down with it. This time, Foliaki can’t capitalise on the advantage and Koopu recovers quickly to take the win and survive the coup.
“The captain’s coup was fun,” Koopu reflects, safe in his captaincy. “I enjoyed it more because JP gave it his all.”
It’s all fun and games until you betray the team, and we leave with Foliaki wondering how Team Wētā will react to his lone-wolf actions and what consequences he’ll face for attempting to take down their captain.
Sadly for him, we suspect the answers are going to be a) badly and b) bad ones.
Celebrity Treasure Island airs Mondays to Wednesdays at 7.30pm on TVNZ 2 and is available on TVNZ+.
Karl Puschmann is an entertainment columnist for the Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
