Episode Report Card Sara M: D | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT RUSSELL IS THE GREATEST PLAYER IN SURVIVOR HISTORY
By Sara M | Season 20 | Episode 15 | Aired on 05.16.2010
When we come back, we do get to spend a little more time with Sandra, as Probst gives her husband in the audience the spotlight. Wasn't her husband fat and unattractive last time we saw him? And yet, now he's all buff and hot. But he's only back in America for two weeks and then he's going back to Afghanistan. Probst asks Sandra what Marcus said to her when he hugged her following the reveal of her win. She says he said good job, don't let Li'l Russell get to her, and she is the queen. Probst suddenly changes the subject to Parvati, asking if her alliance with Li'l Russell worked against her in the end. Parvati says she thinks it did, and the jury thought that she was just riding Li'l Russell's coattails, which was "obviously not true," she says. Probst says that, despite not winning this time, she's played this game for 114 days, and she's tied for second place in most individual immunity challenge wins with 6. Colby has the record with 7, amusingly enough.
Probst asks Li'l Russell if he knew what happened to his hat at the time. Li'l Russell admits that he didn't. He figured someone did something to it, but couldn't think of what strategic advantage she'd get with just three people left in the game. Probst asks what his reaction was when he saw, for the first time tonight, what Sandra did to his hat. Sandra defends her actions, saying the hat stunk and was dirty. Li'l Russell, of course, has no choice but to "give credit where credit is due," because otherwise it would make his sock-burning last season look like the petty vandalism it truly was. Sandra cuts him off, saying that she did feel bad about the hat afterwards when she found out that Li'l Russell had it with him for both seasons, but that went away as soon as he "started acting crazy" again. Li'l Russell says that Sandra's move was truly a good one in a strategic sense because it could have flustered him right before Tribal Council. Um, yes, maybe... but that's not why she did it. I'm not sure if he realizes that, but whatever. Then he says that Parvati should have won. Probst ties to get him to stay with one subject, saying that that is, again, a different game than the one they just played. We aren't playing Russell Decides Who Wins Survivor, Probst says: "Pitch that to Mark Burnett, he may actually like it." Yeah, like Burnett has anything to do with this show anymore.
Probst tries to ask Li'l Russell why he was so bad at jury management. Li'l Russell claims that he doesn't "care" about that aspect of the game. He plays as hard as he possibly can and we're all supposed to recognize and reward that. "Russell, stop," Probst begs. He makes Li'l Russell take a nice, long, deep breath with him to try to calm down. It seems to work for a while, at least. Probst asks Li'l Russell if he's aware after, say, a fight with Rupert where he calls Rupert a "dumbass," that he just lost Rupert's jury vote. I could argue that even before that fight, Li'l Russell didn't have the vote, which Rupert made clear in his statements that started the fight in the first place. Li'l Russell rambles on about playing one long game instead of two. Probst interrupts to say he's not asking about that; he's asking about Li'l Russell's awareness of the jury. "He doesn't understand," one of the contestants (I think it was Danielle) says, as Probst tries to explain his question to Li'l Russell again. Li'l Russell just says, again, that he doesn't care about the social game because he plays as hard as he can and he's made it to the end both times that way.