Spirits And The Final Four

Previously: the season. Well, those ten minutes went quickly. Maybe we can all get out of here in a couple of pages and return to our lives before you can say "burnt coconut-manioc-plantain stew."

Credits. You know, I'll tell you: what really disappointed me about this season was that it seemed initially like there might be some sort of volcano theme or motif at some point, and it just never materialized. Damn those unrealized expectations.

Skull! Volcano! Moon! (That's good for triple-motif points, for those of you playing the home game.) It is Night 36 at Alinta, and the tribe has just returned from the removal of Julie. And Eliza, shockingly, is complaining about the heartbreak of tribal council. Which I think may qualify as a fourth motif, although I may have to await a ruling from the judges. She was so happy when she voted to boot Twila, because she thought it would go that way! She was so thrilled! Chris voices over that, indeed, he voted against Julie and "took Eliza by surprise." Which isn't too difficult, provided you know how to walk quietly and make like a book with lots of words in it so she doesn't pay any attention to you. Chris adds that Julie "pulled a fast one" after the merge when she returned to the women rather than staying with Lopevi, so he "got her back." Indeed. So if you're keeping track of which motive is the frontrunner in the dart-throwing contest that is the race to the finish, that's one point in favor of "revenge."

Eliza goes on around the fire, babbling for everyone's benefit about how difficult it is for her to know whom to trust when it almost seems like everybody else is trying to keep her from winning. Man, she hates that. She continues her noisy complaints about hearing one thing and then hearing something else, almost as if there is trickery afoot, and Chris -- temporarily putting aside his efforts to keep her on his side in favor of his ever more pressing need to get her to shut her blinking yap -- says, "Part of the game, Eliza." Eliza, however, is also still unhappy about Twila making the comment (or the implied comment) that Eliza "didn't deserve to be" in the final five, whatever the hell that means in a game where you can win prizes by answering questions about other people's personal hygiene or whatever. Twila -- unable to leave well enough alone and determined to drive off any remaining jury votes she possibly can -- overhears and repeats that she doesn't think Eliza deserves to be around, so there. Eliza, Twila maintains, is only here as a result of "riding people's coattails." Not really possible, but let's not do that argument again. When Eliza tries to argue for her own usefulness, Twila rips into her for not doing anything around camp but "boil[ing] freaking water." And as I recall, she wasn't great at that. Of course, it's not a real survival competition, and you're not graded on how hard you work, so this is all just a little silly. It's also rather striking, the way Twila is doing a greatest-hits version of the arguments I hate. And I think we know that "I played with integrity" will be making an appearance soon. Maybe somebody will say "fly under the radar." Granted, they'll probably stay away from "think outside the box," but you can't have everything.

Eliza, in spite of the fact that she doesn't really need to defend how "deserving" she is to Twila, decides to continue and thus validate this silly line of reasoning by countering that perhaps Twila herself doesn't deserve to be there. Her problem being that she doesn't seem to know why not. "At least I played the game and worked hard," Twila says sharply as she continues to prepare for bed. "Working hard is not necessarily playing the game," Eliza says with the mysterious tone that a remark can only muster if it has high intelligence or a total absence of content. Eliza goes on to argue that it's more important to have energy at challenges, and points out that she has emerged victorious in a couple of noteworthy instances, so maybe she knows what she's doing. Twila gets frustrated at Eliza for abruptly making a good argument, and snots that Eliza of course has plenty of energy, since she doesn't work around camp. Eliza's response has lots of squeaky sputtering in it, but it amounts to "Well, duh." "If you conserved your energy," Eliza says, growing squeakier by the minute, "maybe you could do better at challenges." And then the music comes to a halt, and there is literally chirping, and then Eliza adds, "Probably not, but maybe." Heh. Twila throws in a sarcastic "Probably not; you're right," because she can't think of anything else. Repetition is the last refuge of the gobsmacked. "The only reason you're here, Eliza, is because everybody's used you up to this point," Twila says, finally gathering her thoughts. Well, Twila, you can tell that to Sandra, who's entire million-dollar-winning philosophy was, "Use me! Use me!"

Later, around the fire with only Chris, Eliza says that Twila is "a dumb bitch." Which, if it doesn't go well for her, will sort of make her a dumb bitch's bitch, so I'm not sure why she went in that direction. She laments to Chris that she can't stand the idea of seeing either Scout or Twila in the final two. Eliza questions Chris about whether he's going to stick with an alliance to her, and he assures her that what he did with Julie was for the benefit of their alliance. Would he lie to her? You know...again? He also reminds Eliza that Julie wasn't exactly concerned about Eliza when it was Julie's neck at stake. "She voted for you," Chris says. "Remember?" Well -- well -- Eliza's not concerned about Julie right now, but nice doubletalk, there, My Pretty Ponytail. Eliza hesitates again. "Ye of little faith," Chris says with some disappointment. "Why don't you just put a little bit of faith in the person you aligned with?" Eliza starts to ask what they're going to do about F4, and whether he thinks they can get Twila or Scout to turn on the other, which is obviously the problem with this plan and obviously the reason it probably won't go the way Chris is telling her it will, and Chris tells Eliza that now isn't the time to discuss it. And because Eliza is not as smart as she sometimes seems any more than she is as dumb as she sometimes seems, she lets it go at that. Chris interviews that he hasn't thought much of the women in the tribe since he wound up the only guy with six of them. He adds that he finds that the fact that Eliza and Twila can't stand each other makes life interesting. Because Chris loves the chick fighting. And...volcano!

Vvvvvvolcano! And then...the final tribal council. And the members of the jury enter, accompanied by loud drumbeats on each of their names. Ominous! They all sit. Jeff begins by snagging the immunity necklace back from Chris. He congratulates Chris and Twila by getting to the end, but says that now, they'll have to sit here and be berated endlessly for being better at the game than the whiny babies with whom they are about to be confronted. He tells them that they'll each get to "make an opening statement" (ugh), and then the jury will ask them questions, and they'll throw around a lot of bullshit, and then they'll say some more crap, and then the jury will vote for whomever they were going to vote for anyway, based on what they think will reflect most positively on them and prove that they didn't really care about winning anyway, they just cared about playing with integrity. If you disagree with any portion of this description, I humbly suggest you have never seen the show.

Chris's opening statement says that he deserves to win, not only because he was "loyal to the alliances that [he] made throughout the game," but because he overcame such long odds, given the fact that he was the last guy with all those chicks. Julie already appears to be wiping away a tear, which...come on. I am convinced someone is peeling an onion just off-camera. In Twila's opening statement, she says that the only thing she wanted to do in the game was win the money for herself and her kid. She says she didn't do everything exactly right, but that everything was just done to win. "I worked hard for it," she says.

The first person to get a shot at the jury is Eliza. Wearing her black-and-white tube top with the little black bow on it, she says that she wants to start with some comments. She tells Twila that she "achieved what [she] set out to do." She did whatever it took to get to the end. "You were a deceptive, lying bitch," Eliza announces, quite pleased with herself. She says that Twila "never treated [Eliza] with an ounce of respect," and says -- as bitter and jealous people have been doing for many moons -- that she might envy being in the final two, but doesn't "envy [Twila's] life." Yes. Because Twila is a bad person. And you're awesome. We get it. Put it on a t-shirt and save me the trouble time. Eliza then reports, however, that she thinks Twila played well, and at least was "outright" (huh?) in her play. Eliza then turns to Chris, saying that he shocked her. Which is kind of the point. "Whereas I knew Twila was going to be a deceptive, lying bitch," she says, "I did not know that you were a deceptive, lying bitch, too." Well, I hope that felt good, because it kind of doesn't make any sense. It makes people on the jury laugh, though, including Chad, who looks with guilt at the ground. Eliza rips Chris for "pretend[ing] to be [her] friend," and then for betraying her, first with the Julie vote and then...well, of course, with the vote to boot Eliza herself. "Un! Necessary!" she declares.