Pearl Islands Reunion

Having concluded the festivities and given the money to Sandra, and then having taken a break to fortify ourselves with a refreshing beer (at least that's what I did), we fade up on the reunion show proper as the Crazy Pirate Tootlers, fresh from their triumphant Yo-Ho-Hoedown Tour, make merry marauding music up on the bandstand. Wow, an electric keyboard, just like the one Blackbeard would have used. Jeff welcomes us to the show, surrounded by pirate accoutrements that were accumulated during a thousand visits to Pirates-R-Us, including a random barrel and, of course, torches and fire. Jeff is wearing what turned out to be a rather controversial brown shirt with a yellow pattern on it. I'll grant that it's got a "hey, baby, want to listen to me play the bongos? I make a mean organic guacamole" vibe that's a little cheesy for my taste. Still, it's better than much of the reality-host wardrobe I've endured over the years, some of which has caused permanent injury to my eyeballs and led me to question my faith in a just universe. Jeff points out that "all sixteen Survivors" are at the reunion. Wow. With their busy schedules, they found time to come back for one more opportunity to be on television? That is quite a scheduling coup. I was sure it would be like the Brady Bunch TV movies of the mid-1980s, where one of the actors was always off getting married or singing country music or trying to recover a scrap of dignity, and it was hard to get the entire cast together. But all sixteen survivors? This is sure to be riveting.

Our first order of business is to get to Sandra, in her Pepto-pink outfit, and for Jeff to remark on how "lippy" she was. Wow. "Lippy": The Subtly Sexist Putdown For Reality Hosts Who Think "Feisty" Isn't Dated Enough. Sandra looks sheepish at this remark from Jeff, as if being noisy is something to feel bad about, which it is not. At least, that's my unbiased opinion. Jeff asks Sandra whether her lippiness is her natural personality. "Tell it how it is, that's always been my motto," she remarks. Oh, mine, too! Well, it's my second motto, behind "If God Had Meant Margaritas To Be Made From A Soulless Mix, He Would Have Made A Little Green Fruit That Dispenses It." Jeff asks whether, as it appeared, it was Sandra's strategy to "go with the flow." She says that, indeed, it seemed like with everyone else strategizing and dancing all around each other, it wasn't worth her while to make up her own strategy; it just seemed more logical to be a vote when people needed one, as long as she wasn't the one on the block. "Everyone always had bigger fish to fry," Sandra says, quite correctly. Never forget to fry the little fish, I always say. She says her approach was always simply to secure herself another three days.

Jeff asks Sandra what it was like to watch the competition with her friends, and she says -- not unreasonably -- that the biggest embarrassment was seeing herself flake out on all the water challenges. It has not escaped Sandra's attention that she tends to look rather drowned-rat-like when she starts to get wet, which might lend a little more credence to Jon's original accusations of aquatic ineptitude than she wanted to grant at the time. She says that in an effort to save face, she always tried to distract her friends during those parts of the show. Heh. That's just what I do when old videotapes of my adolescent theatrical career resurface. ("Hey, there you are in that ugly blue dress!" "Um...look outside the window! A unicorn!") She emphasizes that she can swim in swimming pools -- but that swimming pools turned out to be quite different from swimming in the ocean. The formidable Osten -- who learned everything he knows about gritty determination from Randy "Getting Tackled Is Scary" Moss -- agrees. This makes Jeff laugh, which is by far the best response Osten will be getting from Probst all evening.

, Jeff asks about the fish-dropping incident, and the fact that Sandra allowed Christa to take the blame for it. He asks Christa whether there was any fallout from that. Christa says in her spacey way that there was no problem, which appears to mean that Christa has forgotten it now in the woozy haze of all the good times she's had since the show, some of which she appears to have had about ten minutes before coming on stage, if you get my point. "It's cool now, she's still my buddy," Christa says with a moronic grin. It never ceases to amaze and amuse me the way people on these things always pretend not to be angry after the fact, because they think it makes them look better. They are very wrong. I would respect Christa much more if she at least had the self-respect to imply that she didn't appreciate it when she first found out.

Now, Jeff turns his attention to the jury in general to inquire as to why they voted for Sandra. And to whom does he go for the jury's general opinion? To Rupert, of course. Because Rupert is the representation of all things jury. And all things Survivor, and all things good, and all things pirate, and all things so irritating that you can barely look at them without driving a nail into your eardrum for relief. "I voted Sandra just because she played the game so hard," says the King Of All Things. He allows that he and Sandra were friends, but insists that his real reasoning was that "that girl played hard." He claims that Sandra never let anyone see her playing. "And she was playing us all," he adds meaningfully. Oooooh. That was deep. I need to think about it for a minute until I can process Rupert's wisdom. Okay, I'm done.

Jeff turns to Tijuana now, eager to ask her why she defied the jury's apparent consensus -- that Lill was a Very Bad Person -- and provided the one vote that didn't go to Sandra. Tijuana says that she voted according to the answer to her final question, and that when Sandra said that Lill was the person who was responsible for everyone's ouster, Tijuana actually thought that was a point in favor of Lill, because it indicated that she played effectively. Wow, look at Tijuana, all trying to vote on game-playing merit. Silly girl. You're supposed to be voting to say something about yourself. Hasn't she ever seen the show?

Jeff turns to Lill to explore perhaps the most mystifying question of all, which is why she made the decision to take Sandra to the end instead of Jon. Well, that's the most mystifying question aside from why Lill made her hair quite that red and sproingy for the reunion when it doesn't really flatter her at all and she presumably had a few months to think about it. Lill claims that she used "[her] heart more than [her] head." (About the game, not her hair, although -- presumably, that, too.) She surprisingly does not add, "I had little choice, because my head isn't usually too much help anyway." She says that Sandra is a mom like Lill is, Sandra is a wife like Lill is...and that Jon -- "no offense" -- has nothing going on in his life except being a huge dink, and would probably spend the million bucks on 500,000 two-dollar hookers. She doesn't say the part about the hookers, but it's written all over her face. Of course, Lill said some of this same stuff during the final episode, so I don't think it's completely bogus, but she's also said she thought she would have a better chance against Sandra than against Jon, given his penchant for scheming and the respect other people might have for his style of play. I suspect that in reality, it was some of both. I think Lill hoped to beat Sandra and thought she might have a better chance, but I also think she could not abide the possibility of Jon winning if she guessed wrong. Absent a good read on who would be a better choice strategically, it was a bonus that if Lill got rid of Jon, she would at least...well, get rid of Jon. In her discussion with Probst, Lill goes so far as to claim that she didn't really expect to get votes, because she was an outcast, so it was largely a matter of giving away the money. Again, I don't believe her motives were anywhere near that pure, but I do believe she particularly didn't want to screw up and give Jon the money, so I don't think she's entirely full of it, either. It's not revisionist history so much as it is cleaned up and polished history.

Just to rub a little salt in any wound he may have been able to inflict on Lill with that little flight of fancy, Jeff asks the jury that would have been, in a Lill-Jon final, for a show of hands as to who would have voted for Lill in such a circumstance. Sandra raises her hand, as do Rupert, Christa, and Darrah. In fact, Rupert and Christa both mutter, "In a minute." That would be four votes, meaning that in theory, Lill gave up the million dollars by taking Sandra instead of Jon. Now, it's true that it's easy to say in retrospect, having seen the show, what you would do. Still, I think that, probably, those four people would in fact have voted that way, albeit while holding their noses a little. So I think Lill did probably unwittingly sacrifice the money.

And you know what else is interesting? That show of hands means that Tijuana is claiming she voted for Lill against Sandra but would have voted for Jon against Lill. Ew. What? Does that mean she would have voted for Jon against Sandra? I guess if she were going by maneuvering skill, that might hold, but...jeez, YUCK. The other people claiming they'd have voted for Jon in the fictional Lill-Jon scenario are Burton and Ryan-O...not surprising. Neither of those guys would ever own that they got beat by a middle-aged lady. In light of all these revelations, Jeff essentially asks Lill whether she feels stupid at all, and she shrugs it off, as is her only option. "I went the way my heart was," she says. "That's just Lill," she says, referring to herself in the third person, as she is wont to do, because that's a great way to endear yourself to people, provided they voted for Bob Dole. "That's not inside the game," she says, as lukewarm applause for her generosity of spirit begins. Some -- but not all -- of her tribemates applaud for her. Hey, what's it to them? They didn't lose a million bucks. Rupert leans forward and pats Lill on the back. Oh, what a relief. Thanks, Daddy!

Jeff moves on to the anxiously-awaited Ill-Lay Is A Little Utty-Nay segment, as he inquires about the fact that she seems to have taken "a beating out there, emotionally." Jeff tells Lill, as nicely as one can when one has set out to impugn the mental stability of a scoutmaster, that there were times when he thought she was coming unhinged. Though he says it a little more nicely than that, not mentioning that he himself was evidently afraid to get within fifty feet of her late in the game, lest he be swept into a maelstrom of emotion and sucked through a wormhole of wet sloppy kisses to his ultimate demise. Lill allows that Jeff has a point; she was beaten down by the experience, indeed. Not too much to say beyond that. Jeff points out, pretty much apropos of nothing, that in five of the seven seasons, the person who won the final immunity challenge hasn't won the ultimate prize. Five out of seven really isn't all that statistically significant, there, Jeff, but far be it from me to step on your line. They don't pay me to do math, after all.

Now, Jeff turns to Ryan-O for a discussion of my least favorite issue of all -- Scoutgate, or, Whether Lill Was Obligated To Be More Honest Because Of The Uniform. Ah, yes. The issue with all the moral resonance of a set of Congressional hearings. Ryan-O, like the rest of them, has no concept of how to make himself come off well in the face of defeat. He complains that, indeed, he feels that if Lill was going to wear the uniform, she should have been entirely honest and forthright. Instead, she lied, and she got him and Andrew booted (not that they didn't get her booted first), and darn it, Ryan-O just didn't think that was right. "But you lied," Jeff counters. "Yeah, I lie all the time," Ryan-O says, reminding everyone that in terms of intellect, he is pretty. Lill and Ryan-O exchange a little hand-grab here, which is a little bit endearing, in its strange way. A frustrated Jeff -- who sees that Ryan-O is closer to feeling guilty for lying himself than to recognizing the stupidity of anyone's feeling bad about lying in and of itself -- foolishly turns to Andrew for an assist: "Savage, why...?" Jeff loses his place inside his own head and starts over: "It's a game. Why, because she's a scoutmaster in real life and Ryan-O's an electrician, why is it okay for him to lie, and it's not for her?" Andrew -- as full as ever of that bland superiority that makes him just about intolerable to listen to for more than fifteen seconds -- explains that, in his opinion, the game just brings out what's already in your personality anyway. You know, the way that he, because he's a self-righteous ass in real life, was an extra-super-self-righteous ass when it came time to play the game. It's...really quite a speech. "Ryan-O is an electrician," Andrew sniffs. "He didn't have a scout uniform on, so he can lie as much as he wants." To its credit, the audience laughs at the sheer stupidity of this remark. Does Andrew even hear himself when he spouts this kind of nonsense? Does he understand that other people do hear him? Please, Andrew. Listen to yourself. And then stop talking, before it's too late.

Jeff casts around for anyone who hasn't completely lost his or her mind and therefore still remembers that one might, in theory, be able to separate being a scoutmaster at home from playing a game on an island. He also wisely mentions in passing that Lill may have been a scoutmaster, but that a number of other people are parents in their day-to-day lives, so Lill's obligation to act as a role model can hardly be considered any greater than that of anyone who has children of his own (uh, Andrew) whose moral development is his responsibility. If Andrew can tell his kids that in normal circumstances, he wouldn't lie and plot against people, Lill can presumably explain the same things to her scouts. A brave Trish hops right in on Lill's behalf to similar effect, saying that she thinks you can totally separate home life and island life, and she thinks the idea that you have to play Survivor like a scout just because you're a scout at home is completely preposterous. She adds that she thinks Lill played a great game, that it's impossible to play without doing some lying, and that Lill did probably try to be as nice as she could within the boundaries of trying to win: "I don't think it's really fair to say that she was wearing a scout uniform, so therefore she should let herself get kicked out." Word. Jeff gives props to Lill's own comment at the final tribal council to the effect that you either play the game, or you get sent home. It's a fine point to be directed at the whiners who had trouble throughout the season with other people's playing the game, which whiners shall remain nameless because they are Rupert.