Survivor S08E16

Previously on I Now Pronounce You Woefully Overexposed: Amber won. Rob proposed. Rupert lost twice, and it seemed like that would be enough to keep the show from handing him a million dollars.

After a commercial break, we return to find Jeff in a dark shirt I kind of like, sitting on his stump ready to moderate the obligatory post-season blabberfest customarily conducted to the tune of "Poor Poor Pitiful Me." He announces that all eighteen All-Stars are present "whether they like it or not." They all laugh as if this is terribly funny, because they aren't at all imprisoned by their own notoriety and the need to work as many charity events as possible in a desperate attempt to become famous enough to pay off their implants and porcelain veneers. Jeff says he's going to start with the most recent event -- Amber's victory -- and asks Rob whether Amber earned the win, or whether she "coattail[ed] it." "A little bit of both," Rob answers, which seems like a good sign, because if he denied that he felt that way, you just know there would be nothing but bitterness and resentment to follow, which is excellent for television but probably somewhat bad for being married. Rob says that Amber definitely helped make the decisions for the alliance and that they worked together. "I give Amber all the credit in the world; she deserved one hundred percent to win. Also, I get half, so bite me." Okay, he didn't say the last part. But I filled it in for him.

Jeff asks Amber about the fact that, at first, there wasn't any real romance between the her and Rob. Jeff asks Amber why, prior to falling for Rob, she thought that being allied with him would be a smart idea. She says that originally, she kind of "couldn't stand him," and that he didn't like her that much either, so she thought it would be a pairing that nobody would expect. I can almost see how that could be true, though I'm not sure it is. She says that furthermore, because of Rob's big mouth and temper, she could stand there and let him take all the crap. Which is, in the end, exactly what happened. It's kind of like hanging out with gangs of jockeys because it makes you look taller.

Jeff then acknowledges Amber's ring, says they'll get to it later, and tries to go on with a question, but once the camera gives it a quick fondling, the crowd starts pitching the "Wooooo!" and will not be denied, so Jeff has Amber hold her hand out. It's a very pretty ring, if you like sparkly, which I do for people on TV, even if not for myself. I don't find it so over-the-top that it's gaudy, but it's definitely the kind of engagement ring that could tempt me to use the word "bling," if I didn't eschew it as a matter of near-religious principle. And now her hand is definitely shaking. Aww. "Well," Jeff says, looking at the ring, "Rob did one thing right this season." Oh, burn. Hee. And also, true. Jeff goes back to Rob and asks him whether, if Amber's theory of him being the jackass is right, he was aware that he was going to wind up as the "bad cop" in the game. Rob gives a very good explanation of the fact that he did understand it, and that he went ahead anyway, on the understanding that if the two of them could make F2, people would be pissed but they'd have to vote for one of them, and he was just hoping that maybe people would respect the bad cop more than the good cop. So actually, Rob and Amber both seem to be angling for the "lesser of two evils" thing. It isn't a theory that worked for Rob, but it's a theory I think certainly could have worked. And for a guy like Rob, it's probably the only way he could even have a prayer of winning. If he doesn't go dominant, he'll get booted early because he's a threat (see Colby, Ethan, and so forth). If he goes dominant, he certainly can't be the good cop, because that's not his personality. It's not like his other option was to be the giggly debutante. You can only use a strategy that fits you, I think, so this was his best shot.

Jeff turns his attention to Rupert, which of course makes the audience -- apparently made up entirely of representatives of the tie-dye industry -- start screaming. Rupert, never one to be graceful when he can be an overbearing attention hog instead, turns to the audience, raises his fist, and goes, "RUUUUUUUUH!" Jeff beams, because he doesn't know yet how many times that's going to happen and how far it's going to be from endearing by the time we get done. The audience screams. Rupert does the holler again, trying to rinse that last shred of dignity out of his beard. Rupert then looks at Jeff, smiles at his own hilarity, and says, "Sorry, I had to do that." Gee, if he's sorry, I bet he won't keep doing it, don't you? Sigh. Jeff starts to talk again, but when Rupert hears a couple more people in the audience still cheering, he turns to the audience YET AGAIN and does the roar YET AGAIN. That's three times, if you're keeping score. And this is where I got over the Rupert hating, in a very small way. And you know why? Because the guy is absolutely pitifully sad. If you look at the begging, the pleading, the roaring, the self-pimping, the self-importance...it's hard to hate anybody who's quite that sad.

Never mind, that doesn't work. I still hate him, even though he really is a pitifully sad case. Anyway, Jeff finally says, "Let's get back to where you screwed up." Hee. He mentions that they did have opportunities to get rid of Rob, and they did have an opportunity at F5 to boot Amber: "The only thing I can surmise is that everybody here thought Rob was their ticket to the final two." Rupert says that "there was a lot of talk" about getting rid of either Rob or Amber. He starts to talk again, and then hesitates and turns to Big Tom with this sort of "tsk, tsk, I know you will deny it, even though the crust between my toes knows the truth" thing, and says that there was talk between himself and Big Tom about getting them out. Jeff asks again whether Rupert and Big Tom talked about ousting Rob, and Rupert says that he wanted to, but that Big Tom "stood behind Rob." Now, wait a minute. You mean Rupert tried to break his F4 alliance with Amber and Rob and Jenna? Hm, you don't think that's possible, do you? That doesn't sound like "honor" in the way that Rupert talks about at all. I must be misunderstanding him.

Jeff asks Rob why he ultimately went to F2 with Amber rather than Jenna, because Jeff isn't sure that was right call. Rob says straightforwardly that when it came down to it, Amber had been with him from the beginning, so he stayed with it. He then points out, "I didn't think that I could beat either of them." He says, "I realized that I had pissed off just about everybody on the jury." He says that the final tally was actually closer than he expected. Jeff tries to prove something by asking who voted for Amber and asking whether any of those people would have voted for Rob if he had taken Jenna instead. Unsurprisingly, Shii Ann says that she would have. Jeff tries to imply that this means that Rob could have beaten Jenna, but he blows it by not asking whether any of Rob's votes would have switched to Jenna in that scenario. According to some of the post-game stuff, Rupert would have voted for Jenna rather than Rob, so indeed, just as Rob said, he wouldn't have beaten either of them. Because if there's one thing that absolutely could not have prevailed in this particular season, it was merit. Although I have to say, I would have found the sight of the rest of these people sitting around after giving the money to Jenna much funnier than it was the way it actually turned out. Seeing Alicia forced to choose between voting for Jenna and voting for Rob would have been the highlight of my entire season.

Unfortunately, at this point, we cut to Jerri, who cannot hold her tongue. "I've got to say something," she says, which is Reality-Show Contestant for "I've been sitting here for, like, fifteen minutes, and you haven't put the camera on me once." She speaks in pained tones: "This whole thing...is making me so sick!" And it's not, in fairness to the audience, until she gets around "so sick" that there's much booing, and it's literally one guy at first, and then there's more booing as they realize that she's going to make the Have You No Decency speech. ["I was thinking of it as her Fiona Apple moment, but your historical reference trumps mine." -- Wing Chun] Jerri's obviously surprised to be booed. "You know what?" Lex says haughtily, waving his big tattooed arm over the boos. "We've got two thousand armchair Survivors out there!" EXACTLY! Which is why there's a million-dollar prize without your having to locate an eccentric millionaire who really likes watching people eat rice. Jesus, Lex! Jerri goes on, moaning, "This show is a show about entertainment. This entertainment is coming at a price. What it has cost us? Our friendships, our feelings, our pain, our suffering! For entertainment!" And again, in fairness to the audience, there's only like one guy booing during that whole thing, so Jerri is hardly being shut down by the crowd. I certainly would have been booing a lot more loudly than that, had I been there. And it's only at the end of this dumb-ass speech that they boo again. Jeff points out, absolutely correctly, that it has cost friendships only for some people, and I would add that that's largely due to the idiot behavior of a fairly small number of people. I personally think that without Lex, Kathy, and Tom to stir the pot, this entire season might have ended without bitterness, so if you want to blame anyone for the vitriol, that's certainly where I'd start.

Speaking of people who voice the statements inside my head, you can now hear Jenna rather dismissively say, "We all signed up for it voluntarily." In a particularly knife-twisting move, Jeff moves from Jerri's tirade directly to Colby, the mention of whose name brings the "Yeeeeeep!" cheer of lust from the crowd. Maybe that was only at my house -- where, incidentally, I was the only person watching. Jeff asks Colby what his take is, given that he was well-liked in his first season and was a quick target as an All-Star, betrayed by people without seeing it coming. Colby says that he tries to play the game with "integrity." And I have to say, in Colby's case, the integrity talk bothers me much less, because I think that he means it, in the sense that his attitude is that he gets that playing with a certain ethical construct in mind might cost you the money -- he probably knows that better than anyone. And that's okay with him, and he accepts that as fair, and as part of the game, and he's made his peace with it, and he doesn't give the "if you can live with yourself, then that's FINE, I will just be over here playing in the ash pile" speeches, like he's been wronged. Colby then says this: "It is one thing to know how to play this game well. It is something totally different to be successful at it. These two over here [Rob and Amber] were successful at playing this game against me." (I think it was "against me.") Certain individuals clap -- Rupert, Ethan, Jenna M., Jenna L., among them. Other individuals do not.

Jeff asks Rudy for his take, and Rudy's all, "I'm glad I got voted out early. They're all scumsuckers and I woulda killed 'em where they stood." It takes longer than that, but that's the idea.

Jeff turns to Shii Ann for her take. Jeff asks her about her "glass houses" remark at tribal council. She confirms that she does think it's a game, and she turns and gently and bitchily reminds Big Tom that they did indeed discuss the possibility of voting Rob off. She points out that, by the end, "everyone has betrayed someone."

Jeff asks for an update on the status of some of the relationships between the folks, starting with Big Tom and Boston Rob. Big Tom says that he's pissed off that Rob called Bucky Bo a dumb-ass on TV for losing the spear head, which is just...I mean, if you don't want your kid to be mocked on television, you don't put him on television. That's the tradeoff. Oh, and Big Tom manages to suggest that in the context of the game, he has no problem with Rob being a "lying stealing cheat." I'd like to hear about the stealing and cheating, because...neither of those things occurred, unless much exciting criminal and unethical behavior was edited out of episodes that simply seemed to involve Tom being too dumb to get Rob before Rob got him. Anyway, a small group of people cheer for Big Tom as he goes on talking about how he didn't win, but he's got great family, and blah dee blah. Jeff asks whether any part of the name-calling between Tom and Rob was in good fun, or whether it was really nasty. Big Tom says (referring to the "dumb-ass" thing about Bo, I guess) that he thinks it was mean-spirited. Rob -- not one to lie down and let himself be trod upon -- takes the opportunity to defend himself. "That's crap, in my opinion," he says. He points out that from the beginning of the game, Big Tom called Rob "pony" in a way he felt was derogatory, talking about how he was going to "ride" Rob all the way to the end. "I know how you are," Rob says, "and I never really took it to haa-ht, and I joked around with you, and I called you 'dumb-ass.' And you know what? One way or the other, it was kinda like a term of endearment." HA! My goodness, I do like him. He goes on: "If I offended Bo, or if I offended your family, then I am truly sorry. Howevah, I do not apologize for the way I played this game, but if I did your family wrong, then I apologize and I'm sorry." Now, it's easy to read that as the kind of half-assed apology where people say, "If you were offended, you're an idiot, but if you reacted incorrectly, then I apologize," but it didn't quite come off that way to me. I think he was legitimately saying that he didn't intend to offend Tom, but he apologizes if he did, and that, I think is all right. I'll grant you it's a somewhat perfunctory apology, but when a guy's been calling you every name short of "motherfucker" on television for long enough, I tend to be lenient if the worst thing that can be said about your apology is that it's insincere.

Anyway, Rob extends his hand, and Big Tom won't shake it at first, having to go on first about how it takes a big man to apologize or whatever, and then they finally shake hands. And as they shake hands, Rupert -- who is between them -- pats them both on the thigh. Because Daddy is always happy when the kids make up. And any time you can pat people and prove that you're smarter than they are, that's an opportunity not to be passed up.

Jeff says we need a break. I know I do.

We return to a little montage about Rob and Amber and their big loooove, which I do not think I need to recap for you again. They kissed. Now they're engaged. There are presumably steps in between, but frankly, not that many. Jeff says when we get back that they still have a big reveal yet to go. But before that, there's another big reveal, which is that Jerri decided to bolt during the commercial, because she is taking a stand, I guess, in favor of contestants who have posed in Playboy and appeared on multiple reality shows and STILL haven't managed to get people to stop paying attention to them. Oh, the mangy dogs of public opinion and how they do pursue the quiet Jerri. Let me tell you something -- you can tell how former reality television contestants actually do not enjoy fame. You know how? Because they are no longer famous. Fame requires maintenance. It requires effort. If Jerri didn't want to be famous anymore, she simply wouldn't be. And there are those people in the world, only you don't know who they are, because you've forgotten them already, which is exactly what they want. See what I mean?

Jeff explains that Jerri also left because of the negative crowd reaction to her comment. Hatch says that he thinks it's "tough," because people think of you as a character, and "unless you have a really, really tough skin like" Hatch himself does, it's hard. He goes on to say that Jerri's "a great girl" and "a super person," and that she was just "upset." See, I have come to really admire that ability to respect the impact it has on people's feelings without indicting the audience for its reaction either. It's like...yes, it's hard. It would be hard on anyone. But it's also what you signed up for, and it's way too late in the day, especially for somebody like Jerri, for being coy about the hazards of fame, you know? If you hate reality television, don't do it. Or at the very least, for fuck's sake, don't keep on doing it. With this, Jeff says that the show must go on, and that Jerri knows "we still like her." Hmph. Not as much as I did ten minutes ago, speaking solely for myself.

Jeff turns to Rob and Amber, and tells them how when people knew there was a big surprise, they kept asking him if Rob was going to propose, and he told them flat-out that was not the surprise. He asks Amber whether she knew that Rob was going to do that. She says that she didn't know he was going to do it at that moment, but that it was something they had talked about from time to time. Rob says that she didn't know it would be tonight -- he says he talked to Amber's mom and dad in their hotel room this morning. Aw. Jeff cuts to the various parents and asks them to give the thumbs-up if they approve, which they eventually do. Both sets of parents look genuinely happy, so although you never know, there aren't a lot of openly bad signs. Not to anticipatorily damn anyone's nuptials with faint praise.

Jeff asks Rob and Amber if either of them ever suspected they were being played by the other. They're both like, "Yes, dummy." Jeff asks Amber when she realized she had real feelings for Rob, and she singles out the part where they were separated, and she realized that she actually missed him. Jeff says he's "still reeling" from their getting engaged. He tells Rob that he pegged Rob as "smitten with Amber" from fairly early on. Rob says yes, that's right. Rob, not being much for BS, says that at first, he was just overwhelmingly physically attracted to her. He says that aside from that, though, he pretty much thought she was "a little snawwb" when they first hit the beach. He repeats, however, that seeing her at her "lowest low" (bikini bottoms) and "highest high" (bikini top), he "saw something in Amber that [he's] never seen in anybody else before." Jeff asks Amber what she sees in Rob, and you know what? Again, it's with the safety and security. That is starting to get creepy. Couldn't she mention that he's funny, which he is? Or that he has a kind of "fuck you" attitude that's really kind of charming, which he does? Or at least that he's fun? I mean, the whole "he supports me no matter what" thing is cool, but...she sounds so single-minded about it, you know? Jeff claims that everyone is happy for them. Jeff says that when we return, one Survivor will be giving another one a car. Huh? Like there haven't been enough cars? Sigh.

And when we get back, Jeff first has to run through a few updates from those who remain. He first asks a weirdly overtanned-looking Jenna M. about the loss of her mom. He asks how the family is doing. She says that she's doing well, and has a great group of friends, including people from the show, so she's good. She says Mom is still with her. Maybe it's her lighter hair that's making her look too tanned to me. Jeff says that there is some good news for her, and he outs her romance with Ethan, which Ethan looks frankly a little ill about admitting, as he sometimes has in the past. I'm not sure what the phobia is, but he doesn't look like he at all enjoys having anyone know about that. Jenna insists that there's more to their relationship than Survivor, not that she's aiming that at anyone in particular, Rob and Amber.

And now, Jeff goes to Sue and has her stand up. Apparently, Sue had some kind of makeover involving a lot of surgery. Which...I talked about this with somebody afterward, and we agreed that she just doesn't look that different, except that her boobs are bigger. I mean...I guess she looks surgery-d up, but...I don't really get it. I'm not trying to be mean, but I sort of think her self all seemed like it was at least the same person, while she now kind of looks like she's partly herself, but she's had portions of other people and their personalities and styles grafted onto her. She also says it's her seventeenth wedding anniversary. No one cares, because her husband isn't on television.

Rupert. Audience: "Woooo!" Did this hurt his relationship with Laura? Rupert talks about how hard it was to be away from his wife for so long. Audience: "Wooooo!" Rupert talks about how pretty his wife is. Audience: "Wooooo!" It all went dark at about this point; I think I blacked out.

And now, Jenna Lewis. Did Jeff hear right, did she just get married? Yes, she did. He does not go on to say, "Did you really marry a twenty-one-year-old model?," but she apparently did that as well. Jeff compliments her on how good she looks, and Jenna says, "Thank you. And I haven't had any work, so." Hee. I thought that was funny. And so does Boston Rob, whom you can see laughing pretty hard to her at that remark.

Jeff wraps up with "even Richard Hatch" as a person who's found a love match. Apparently, while sequestered, Hatch snagged himself a member of the Argentinean hospitality industry, and they are very happy together. So yay, Hatch. Hint to Hatch's boyfriend: bite him on the arm. He likes it. Oh, and note the conspicuously non-clapping Big Tom in the front row. Maybe he has some kind of objection to romances that involve...well, you know. The Argentinean hospitality industry.

Now, Jeff moves on to the first of two "twists" they're about to unveil in the last five minutes. He explains that this is the first time that the winner of the game has also received a car during the game. For this reason, Amber is being given the responsibility of giving a Chevrolet Equinox to somebody. And she can't give it to Rob. He tells her she has ten seconds to think about it. She looks genuinely unhappy about being put in this position and genuinely uncertain of what to do. She looks at Rob like, "The hell?" She leans over and says something to him, and he just shakes his head and says, "Whoever you want." The crowd hollers out various things. Amber leans over to Rob again, and he says, "Don't listen to them. You make up your own mind." She leans over and whispers in his ear, and he leans back over and says, "Who was the deciding vote?" Amber stands up and halfheartedly says, "I'm gonna give it to Shii Ann." Shii Ann smiles and nods, as if this is something she planned from the beginning of the season. Jeff asks Amber why she chose Shii Ann, and after the two women hug, Amber says that "Shii Ann was the deciding vote" for the million. Which makes no sense, of course, given that everyone's vote counted the same as everyone else's. So that's crap. She's giving it to Shii Ann because she sort of has to give it to someone who voted for her, and she certainly can't give it to Tom, Lex, or Alicia, because they all treated Rob like shit. That's what I personally believe. Shii Ann got the car because she was the only person who voted for Amber who wasn't uncivil in the extreme to her boyfriend. So, you know, fine, but it does seem like rather an enormous miscarriage of justice. I mean, seriously. Shii Ann, for God's sake? Shii Ann, of course, smiles like it makes perfect sense. She knew this would happen. Stupid, stupid players didn't figure out she was angling for the third car.

Jeff sends it to a commercial, and when we return, it's time for Jeff to announce the final twist -- in this case, the twist that drained away every bit of respect I ever had for this show in about ten seconds. He announces that in addition to the million CBS already gave away, it's giving away another million. And on what basis? Viewer voting, American Idol-style. Which means that the entire thing that makes Survivor fun is totally wrecked, at least for this season, and for any future season in which they don't make perfectly clear that they will no longer be doing this.

See, I've been recapping reality TV for about three years. And the thing I hate more than anything else is the endless stream of conspiracy theories that insist that the shows are all fixed to lead to a certain outcome, manipulated by the producers. It has been perfectly obvious to me from the minute I started watching that this was not the case and could not be the case, simply because the audience almost never gets its way. To use an example from a different show, if the audience got its way and got the winners it wanted on The Amazing Race, the first three teams to win the show would have been Kevin and Drew, Danny and Oswald, and Ken and Gerard. Period, hands-down, no questions asked. But none of those people won. Because it's a competition, and it's not fixed, and if that means that Flo wins, then so be it. ["Not that you ever have to make your personal peace with that fact and can continue to resent it for years afterward. Right? Because I do." -- Wing Chun] That's how you know it's a competition, and that's how you stay invested in it. You stay invested in it because you may or may not get the outcome you want, and nobody is promising you that at the end, you will get to wrap up the season with a big red bow.

This show has always been the same way. There was something ballsy about the fact that Hatch won the money in the first season, and Brian won it in Thailand, and Jenna Morasca won it in the Amazon. Sometimes you get a satisfying ending, and sometimes you get an ending that makes you wonder how the people you liked let the people you didn't like walk off with the money. You take those lumps as a viewer willingly, because this is a competition, not an episode of Queen For A Day. Put it this way -- you may get on the show by being good television, but you don't win by being good television. You win by winning. But now, with this "twist," you win just by being good television, which sort of makes the show about itself in an unsettlingly meta kind of way. You get a million dollars -- the same prize that goes to the person who guts it out for more than a month and bests a whole crowd of other people using whatever methods he or she has to -- just for being popular. And that, my friends, is absolute bullshit. Particularly in a scenario where multiple online votes can be cast by bots and auto-doohickeys and so forth, this kind of thing is meaningless anyway -- it means about as much as the results mean on American Idol, which is to say not much. For all the complaints about feeding off of people's worst instincts, the one thing that Mark Burnett shows -- and better reality shows in general -- have not been guilty of until this particular moment is pandering -- giving audiences mush-mouthed feel-good crap-ass suck-up endings.

The message to the audience is this: don't like the ending? You get to invent a different one! And that's ridiculous. Giving away something to someone in an audience vote? Oh, maybe. But a million dollars? The same prize you actually get for winning? Come on.

In any event, the castaways all know instantly that the money going to Rupert is a foregone conclusion, and so do I, and so do you. Because that's why they're doing it in the first place. Because this is a manipulated, fixed ending, forced by the producers. And as much as I generally hate the expression about shark-jumping and find it an overused clich, I have never seen it more apt than here, because this is the moment where the entire show changed from a mischievously nasty show that demanded that you the viewer risk an ending you didn't like to a pathetic display in which you may expect to be pleased by the outcome, and if the majority doesn't get an outcome that pleases it, then it may expect to be given that outcome as an afterthought. Because who really cares about the competition, right?