Survivor S09E15

So Chris won, remember? Sure you do. You laughed! You wept! You wrote to your relatives!

We open the Reunion portion of tonight's Vanuatupalooza by gazing fondly upon the now-famous Chris interview in which he explains that by allowing women to see your warm and vulnerable side, you can fuck them over much more efficiently. Uh, Chris? You really don't need to spread that around, because as a principle, it causes enough trouble for some of us already.

Back on stage, Jeff and his...baseball jersey (someone has apparently absconded with Jeff's usual collection of pseudo-casual safari-barbecue-company-picnic-wear) explain that Chris's ability to read chicks is "just one of the reasons" he won the money. Other reasons, of course, include bitterness, stupidity, artificial joints, and the unbreakable bonds of NASCAR. Jeff asks Chris to recall his "rough start" in the first episode, when he found himself unable to navigate the balance beam and almost exited first. Asked whether there was a turning point for him in the game, Chris tells a story about Julie coming to talk to him after she jumped alliances back from Lopevi to the women after the merge, and asking him if he hated her. He assured her that he didn't hate her, but was just disappointed. Jeff -- beginning a bizarre effort that will last throughout the episode to cast Chris as a worthless piece of shit -- says in an accusatory fashion, "You played the disappointment card." Huh? Chris is like, "Uh, I guess," and then explains that he was glad he kept his relationship with Julie intact, because ultimately, Julie was the person who took up for him with the Ami alliance. Jeff tells Chris that he was very good at telling people what they wanted to hear. "You played this big-brother, 'I'm just really disappointed,'" Jeff lectures, based on apparently very little evidence. I mean, didn't Chris have reason to be disappointed when Julie went with the women instead of with Lopevi? Isn't "disappointed" pretty much the precisely correct reaction? Chris counters that his thinking was that Chad had been extremely upset with Julie after she bolted the Lopevi alliance, and that Sarge reacted the same way, so basically, Chris just felt like acting angry wasn't productive, no matter how angry he actually was. "I saw an opening to keep my mouth shut," he says. Wow. Yeah, Jeff, he's a real bastard.

Jeff turns to Julie. "He pays you back," Jeff says, "by putting his arm around you, stroking your hair, and then cutting your throat." Julie nods sadly. "Stroking your hair"? Whatever, No-thario. Jeff then expresses some shock at the fact that Julie voted for Chris anyway. "Because he played me so hard," she says. "I wasn't going to vote out of spite." Jeff congratulates Julie for being "able to separate personal feelings at that moment and still look and say, 'He did play me.'" Julie agrees, because she also thinks she's awesome. And...you know, speaking of separating personal feelings, I'm not saying that Jeff was obligated to tell anyone that he was dating Julie before the reunion aired, but two things strike me. First of all, he loves to embarrass people by going after their personal lives and trying to keep them from having any privacy whatsoever, so I'm not sure his life should have been set up as off-limits, which it obviously was, or someone would have mentioned it. And second of all, if Julie is his girlfriend now, to the point where he's making "this person is the love of my life" statements, can he interview her with any detachment whatsoever? Not to go all professional-obligations about reality-show production, but I kind of feel like Jeff's role at the reunion is largely to call out bullshit, and it's not like he's going to do that when they're a couple. It's just...he doesn't have to not have favorites, but I'm not sure he should be practically engaged to somebody and not even disclose it, because we're kind of sitting through a faked-up dynamic in which he knows her from the show, like he does anyone else. It would be one thing if he had done it in a way that made him seem capable of putting those feelings aside, but...he didn't. Which we'll get back to.

Jeff now turns to Eliza and tells her it's "basically the same story," and she nods in agreement. Chris played her, lied to her, and she still voted for him. And Jeff -- who is not setting the world on fire with his insightful analysis of the season thus far -- does at least have the perceptiveness to ask Eliza whether she voted "for Chris or against Twila." Eliza admits that her vote was a combination of both, but that a lot of it was indeed against Twila. She repeats her accusations from the season that Twila treated her disrespectfully, even though she claims that over time, she has "grown to love Twila" (in the "can look upon her without spitting" sense), and no longer has hard feelings. Lie! "But at the time," Eliza says with that self-satisfied little tightly smiling face, "I was furious with her." She wants you to understand, in case you thought "deceptive, lying bitch" was a compliment. (The way it would be from, you know, me.)

Jeff asks Chris whether this aspect of Twila -- this tendency to inspire votes "against" from other people -- played into his decision about who he wanted with him in the final two. Chris laughs at this incredibly dumb question, and says "absolutely" that was part of the decision. Chris stammers about how Twila is Twila, and that if you saw the show, you know what she's like. She's "outspoken," and "wasn't shy about telling somebody what she thought." Twila jumps in here, eager to lap up some of what Jeff is scooping out for her: "What you're saying is that most of the time, I told the truth, but you lied like a dog and you won?" Chris shrugs, Twila laughs, and everyone applauds, because...well, yes, dear. What show did you think this was? "I think that's pretty clear at this point," Jeff says with what borders on disgust at the outcome, which I think is completely bizarre. I just don't get what's up Jeff's ass about Chris winning, but something certainly is.

Continuing the Jeff Probst Parade Of Baffled Contempt For People Who Voted For Chris, he moves on to Leann. He continues to press the issue of people voting for Chris even though he totally liiiiiied to them, and it's so absurd -- Leann is the person most likely to vote for Chris. Why on earth would Leann vote for Twila? Chris and Twila were both part of the group that voted Leann off, and Twila was the one who was supposed to be on Leann's side. And she didn't like Twila, and she didn't have any reason not to like Chris. She also explains that Chris had such crap odds of getting to the final four -- not to mention winning -- when it came down to him and six women, that she couldn't help being impressed with his game play. "And secondly, I promised Twila I'd never write her name down," says Leann. Everybody's like, "Oh, buuuuurn," and it's like...do you people watch the damn show? That's Alicia's bit, and it isn't even as brilliant as Alicia thought it was, let alone capable of carrying over to another season. Jeff asks Leann whether her vote was also against Twila, and Leann allows that, in part, it was: "Yeah, my feelings were hurt." Not to be confused with being bitter because she lost, because it wasn't like that at all.

And now, we move along to Ami, whom Jeff doesn't tacitly accuse of being an idiot for voting against Twila, even though Twila voted against Ami and engineered the downfall of that alliance. Because baffling votes for Twila are not to be questioned; only baffling votes for Chris. Jeff merely says, "In spite of everything you said, you voted for Twila." And he says it kind of admiringly, like it was really cool of her to put aside the ugliness. Ami sucks up the praise, grinning as if she is a good sport -- which she isn't -- and saying that Twila played her so effectively that Twila "got [Ami] straight on." Jeff doesn't counter that Twila "slit [Ami's] throat" or anything, so apparently if Twila fucks you over and you vote for her, you're a hero, but if Chris fucks you over and you vote for him, you're a weak little fool. Nice. Jeff asks Ami whether her vote had to do with the women's alliance, and she insists that it didn't. Ami pretends to be gracious, talking about how Chris and Twila both outplayed her and laughing as if she doesn't resent it, when she totally does. It's always so obvious when these people have spent a lot of time reading about themselves and know exactly what they need to say and do in order to redeem themselves, including complete personality makeovers. Reunion Ami just doesn't have very much to do with Game Ami, to the point where you wonder if she's in that awesome movie where Mare Winningham winds up with another woman's brain.

Jeff now asks Scout whether she voted for Ami as a result of the women's alliance, and she says that she did have an alliance with Twila that she stuck with all the way. "When the final vote came down, I couldn't give a million dollars for that much bullshit," Scout grins, because it's adorable to be the old dirty lady, and also because she's sure she's the one person who saw through Chris. As I have explained before, I simply think Scout bought the version of Chris that he sold her, much as everyone else did, so she assumed he was lying to Julie and Eliza about feeling bad about screwing them. It has never occurred to her that perhaps he was lying to her. That's why I think she ain't nearly as smart as she thinks she is. But everybody thinks old people swearing are adorable, so everyone applauds. And Twila hugs Scout in this conspicuous way, like she's been in so much pain until this very moment when Chris's skullduggery was uncovered...it just skeeves me out, this moral superiority routine that Scout is running.

Jeff turns to Sarge -- who has his hair buzzed in such a way that he looks even more bullet-headed than usual -- and asks him whether he was determined to vote for a man from the beginning, or whether his vote was against Twila. Sarge insists that "it was never a man-woman thing." He goes on to say, "What I looked at it is, I would never surround myself with a person that has no values." He goes on to praise the values-driven way in which he lives his life, reaching nearly Lex-ian levels of self-congratulation, and explaining that if a person is not as good and decent and moral as Sarge is, then he won't reward that person. He clarifies that his issue with Twila -- and specifically his vote -- wasn't about the endgame, and wasn't about what happened with her son. It was about the part where she flipped alliances. So Sarge, you see, decided that Twila had "no values" based purely on game play. Sarge isn't even claiming, as Lex did, that it was about the betrayal of a friendship outside the game. Just purely making an alliance inside the game and breaking it? That was a sign that she has "no values." If she had broken her alliance to the women, that would have meant she was going to heaven. Because the angels are always on the side of you getting stacks and stacks of cash, aren't they, Sarge?