You will recall that when we left our Survivors, Tom had just been informed of his apparently lopsided victory, part of the CBS Reality Division's Season of Honor. (Motto: "It's Not A Game If You Lose.") But as we always must, we now return to observe the aftermath of this over-cast season, in which Tom got the money, Ian got the shaft, and the dish ran away with the spoon. Which was appropriate, since there was a certain amount of diddling.
Cheering brings us back to the live reunion special that I have come to dread so thoroughly, if only because it often makes people who are hot look like L.A. gym monkeys who just got here from an audition for a movie destined to play only on Cinemax After Dark. The upside, I suppose, is that Jeff Probst doesn't have a secret girlfriend among these contestants (one would hope), so perhaps things will be a little more balanced than last time. Jeff, whose hair looks kind of dweeby tonight, welcomes us to the first reunion of the twenty people who started this season. Yeah, remember? There were twenty damn people. They practically had to bring them to the island in a clown car. After this brief introduction, Jeff moves immediately to the most important person in the cast -- Wanda. No, not really. He starts with Tom, of course. Tom, incidentally, is back to that hot-soap-opera actor -- or, as Wing Chun would say, "silver fox" -- look, having shaved and combed and eaten since returning from camp. Jeff offers him congratulations, which Tom accepts with a smile. Jeff and Tom share some hoot-hoot-hoot for how awesome New York is (agreed), and then Jeff pronounces Tom's victory "well-deserved" (also agreed). Jeff reminds those who didn't watch the show itself and just thought they'd tune in for the most boring part of the entire season that Koror dominated, winning eleven of fourteen challenges -- with all the losses being rewards -- and how Tom personally dominated as well, winning five of seven immunities. Both of those are records, in case you didn't know. Never have so many been so worthless to the benefit of someone like Caryn. The bottom line is that if you like challenge winners, you've got to like Tom.
Jeff asks Tom what his strategy was going into the game. Tom says that his wife and a good friend are the ones to whom he owes the victory, because he was working on a complex plot at home prior to coming on the show, and they told him that he should just be himself. Obviously, they are not watchers of the show, since Tom is a total anomaly, in that being like Tom has never worked for anyone, ever, under any circumstances, in the past. We see Tom's wife Bernadette, incidentally, who is lovely and accessorized with a little boy on her lap. Tom says that his plan to "hide underneath [his] gray hair" went awry early. He claims that he actually "played a lousy strategy game" by not hiding himself very well. As Tom chatters on, Jeff cuts him off, pointing out that this kind of meaningless and allegedly self-deprecating blather is the actual reason why Tom won. Which is awesomely deflating, but really, Tom is right. He didn't play a brilliant strategic game, necessarily, because he didn't have to. Tom was exposed to three jury votes prior to F2. Three. One when they still had Willard to kick around and it barely counted, one when Steph was booted, and one when Gregg was booted. He didn't have to stay clear of very much voting using strategy, because he played a huge part in winning so damn many challenges. And the one week he was in the most trouble -- the week Gregg left -- not only was he not the one to figure out the move he needed to make (Ian was, not that Tom seems all that grateful these days), but he wasn't headed out that week anyway. Tom could have totally missed that one strategic move of going after Gregg, and provided that the immunities went the same way, the tribe would have booted Caryn and again missed its last chance at Tom. Steph got it exactly right when she told that entire tribe that the best chance to get rid of Tom was the week she went home. Because the week Gregg went home, Ian and Caryn had too much on the line themselves to do anything but vote defensively to block Gregg. That was the one shot, just the way Steph said it was. They didn't take it, and this is their result. Fools!
Jeff asks Tom about the importance of his relationships with Ian and Katie. Tom says that the bond between them formed the very first night out. Jeff points out that it's not often you see an alliance that can last that long. Tom agrees. Jeff fails to point out that Tom repaid Ian's thirty-five days of loyalty with the biggest explosion of passive-aggressive moralizing since Touched By An Angel. Because that would totally not fit the story Jeff is trying to tell here, people.
Jeff asks Katie about the heat she took in the final tribal council, and singles out Gregg for the way he attacked Katie when, in fact, Katie's strategy was what she said it was, and she played just as she said she did. Gregg is obviously aware that he came off like a total jackhole in that sequence and will never get a date again if it doesn't work out with Anonymous Jenn, so he sort of babbles something mealy-mouthed about how he forgot to care for his "personal relationships" or something, and then he says that for the thirty-three days he was there, Katie entertained him and so forth, and that they were friends, and that "she articulated her strategy very well." It's an incredibly watery apology, given that there isn't an "entertaining" person alive who doesn't know that being called "entertaining" is short for "I was laughing with you at least forty or forty-five percent of the time." Gregg claims to feel "horrible about it." And frankly, he should. Jeff throws Gregg some kind of redemption bone (Redemption Bone is totally the name of my first album), saying that Gregg had also said at one point that he used that tribal council to continue making the person "earn" the money. Gregg talks about how the game is "about being accountable for your actions" (barf), and then there's this disgusting nonsense about how you "pay the price to keep the game pure" (no, really!), and then he says that after he eviscerated Katie and called her pathetic in front of the entire group, he totally gave her a hug later. God, I have so fucking been there. I hate that guy. Take your hug and fuck off, you smug bastard. Feeling your pecs through your glistening shield of self-importance doesn't feel quite good enough to make up for your shit. GAH!
Jeff notes to Katie that she seemed shocked by the hate she faced with the jury, which Jeff thought was dumb, because it was obvious that some of them hated her. It's like a Probstian knot of insults that keeps going round and round -- "People hated you. Which you were stupid to be surprised by. Because it was obvious that people hated you. You're really stupid. I wonder if that's part of why people hated you in that way that you were so stupid to be surprised about. The other thing is that people hated you." Jeff notes Janu specifically on his list of people Katie couldn't have missed as members of her non-fan club. Katie says that she wasn't, in fact, surprised by the hate from Janu. She says, in fact, that she knew going in that she probably wouldn't answer whatever Janu asked her. So of course, Jeff detours into that for a moment, talking about how Katie made this dangerous assumption that she didn't have Janu's vote. He tries to get Janu to prove his point by saying she hadn't entirely made up her mind yet, but Janu steps on Jeff's mojo by instead admitting that Katie was right that there was no point in answering, because Katie had about as much chance of getting Janu's vote as she did of beating Tom in a dummy-dragging contest followed by a competitive beer guzzle. The audience laughs, because they feel for Jeff when he tries to do something that will be really cool and it doesn't work because the contestants aren't as interesting as he wishes they were.
Jeff returns to Tom and Gregg for a little more discussion of strategy. Specifically, they both had a lot of game theory in mind, trying to figure out the other person's best move and respond to it before it happened. Gregg explains that he did indeed go down the line of people in camp every night, thinking about what their best move would be. Of course, people on Survivor often don't make their best move, and when they do, it's an accident half the time, and "best move" might include making you look good on television...I mean, who thought Ian's best move was to quit in F3? This is probably as good a strategy as any, but given the vanity, stupidity, and positioning that goes on in this game, it's far from mechanical to apply it. At any rate, this is how Gregg played the game. Jeff moves to Tom, who says that the reason he missed Gregg's approaching flip at F6 was that Gregg has that "always stick to the plan" thing going on, and that he didn't believe Gregg would step out of the F5 alliance they had going on. Interestingly, Tom now seems to understand that Gregg really was after him, not like at the final TC, when he insisted that Ian had led him astray. Again, I wonder if Jeff ever thinks to ask about something like that, rather than to ask everyone how they became a better person as a result of their time on the island, followed by their time at a resort. Jeff tries to get Tom to admit that he ultimately went after Gregg before Gregg could go after him, but Tom insists that, no, he would have waited until F5, had Gregg not been on the move. Which is easy for him to say, of course, because he believed he had the F3 alliance. Again, sticking with the plan, and honoring your word -- both ways that Tom gets to win the money, as it happened. As I've said several times, in terms of Tom's honor analysis, I believe that he believes it, but it's also a bit facile for a person in his position to lecture about the choice between your best interests and the money when he wasn't put to that decision nearly as starkly as others were.
Caryn. She bores me so much. Do we have to talk to her? Any other season, she would have been gone around the fourth or fifth week. Jeff says to her that his sense is that if you can get as far as F5 without any alliances, you should be the most valuable person there, because you're the swing vote. "How did you go home that night?" Jeff asks her incredulously. Caryn says she's not sure what happened, but that she thinks when she tried to hide from Tom and Ian the stuff that was going on with the women, she thinks she was sunk. Well, right. That's how you kill yourself as the swing vote, is you refuse to stop swinging. Having your choice of two alliances is lovely, but it doesn't mean you can have both. Caryn's earrings, incidentally, are really huge and somewhat disproportionate given that she's something of a pinhead, but other than that, she looks much lovelier than she did in Palau.
Now, Jeff wants to talk to Ian, whom he mercifully does not address as "Dummy." Jeff also makes this dumb-ass comment about how Tom and Katie were the two people Ian had "betrayed so severely." This is such bullshit, Jeff -- Katie betrayed them at least as badly, like, eight times! And Ian never even voted for Tom! And he certainly never betrayed freaking Katie! This is why I hate the reunion -- it's revisionist history, and with a few notable exceptions, Jeff never really nails them on it, and sometimes he even encourages it, as he's doing here. Ian explains to Jeff that there wasn't much to do but think, so he was sitting up there thinking about how he wants to be a good person and a role model, blah blah blah. And he says "values," and it's gross, and "sacrifice what I was going to take back to my family," and so forth. Jeff asks if he has any regrets. "Absolutely not," Ian says. Everyone claps, making Ian the first quitter ever not to be eviscerated. It's a complicated world Jeff has made for us.
As we go to commercials, Jeff talks about how, among winners, "the average age is thirty-four," and makes this comment to Ian about how he "grew up a little bit out there." Jeff certainly has decided to swallow the "honor and integrity" story hook, line, and sinker. What's great is that the statistic Jeff just mentioned proves the opposite of his point, because if anything, it proves that people who win are old enough to withstand the kind of stupid mental bullshit that Ian fell victim to and that caused him to throw the game. Ian didn't grow up out there -- he proved he's still a kid. Which is lovely and endearing, but allowing yourself to be berated for playing a game the way it's designed to be played is not a sign of maturity. Ian makes a grinning crack about playing with somebody who was "almost three times [his] age," and Tom reaches over to whack him, and Tom's million sure has greased the wheels of that friendship, hasn't it?
When we get back, Jeff talks about the "big characters" of the season, and makes reference to "big revelations," like Ian's "regarding integrity" (yuck, P.U., barf, spee-yack).
I try hard to be moved by the Coby bit in which we learn again that he used to get beat up, and now he's a real live boy or whatever. Coby is so tough! Jeff asks Coby whether he came on the show to "get rid of some demons." Coby talks about how in high school, he wasn't popular, and Survivor is "like high school," so now he could be popular. Er, okay. Didn't really work out that way, considering that he was essentially exiled for inability to play nicely with others, but he says something again about how he likes to be "part of a team." Jeff asks whether he got rid of any skeletons, and Coby assures us that he did. Coby has become a better person, y'all. Can you stand it? Ian turns around and pats his leg, because Ian has become a better person, too. My teeth hurt.
Jeff now brings up the showdown at the sumo thing between Coby and James. Jeff reminds James of the way he complimented Coby so effusively, and then predicts that James's friends at work probably gave him a certain amount of crap. James points out that he's unemployed. No, really. In this season of warmth and tenderness, there is still a place for the down and out to run free. James says, though, that his old friends do indeed know about the showdown, and that when the ask him about it, he tells them "straight up" that Coby is one tough hairdresser. He admits that he originally planned to "whoop Coby," whom he figured would be "feminine," and thus ripe for a tail-whooping. But in the end, this steelworker learned that the only tail to be whooped was his own (tm World's Wildest Police Videos). "That boy, he's got some tail," James says. And then Coby raises the roof, which...you can really only raise the roof ironically now in my eyes, especially after I saw it done in the Mr. Show sketch where the talk show is out on the lifeboat (you'd have to see it...trust me). But Coby is being...disturbingly sincere. He loves the roof and he feels good about raising it. Jeff then gives James a chance to talk about how much he now appreciates his family, which James proceeds to do. Because what has become of James since the end of the season? Yes, it's true: James, too, has become a better person.
Now, Jeff goes over to Janu, talking about her "tough days" and her lying around camp, and her going off by herself on the island. It's not easy being the Garbo, you know. She rehashes how great that night of isolation was for her, like something out of Outward Bound, and how it gave her the power to...well, quit, apparently. Always one to take the pulse of the internet on his days off, Jeff asks Janu to clear up the matter of whether he coerced her into quitting, and Janu says no, he didn't. Having failed to learn the lesson that you never run a demonstration in court unless you know how it's going to turn out (also known as the O.J. Doesn't Actually Have To Try On The Gloves, Provided You Have Testimony That They Are His Size rule), Jeff asks whether anyone who was there thought he coerced her. Both Coby and A-Jenn begin to put up their hands, so Jeff ignores them and says as quickly as he can that as you can see, nobody who was there thinks he coerced her. It's kind of awesomely ballsy the way he just totally acts like they're not there. He doesn't see you if he doesn't want to. It's an imaginary world, after all. Jeff goes on to argue that if you're vulnerable to being told to quit, then you probably want to quit, so he couldn't have really coerced anyone anyway and so forth. Which is true, but it was really stupid to ask if anyone thought he coerced her if he wasn't ready for the answer -- or, really, if he didn't already know the answer. This entire exchange, about how he only invites you to quit if he can tell you want to anyway, causes Jeff to make use of the disturbing expression, "If I can smell it, I'm going to find it." Oh, Jeff.
Now, we discuss Ankle-Jeff and his decision to quit by asking to be voted out. Regular-Jeff asks why Ankle-Jeff should have left with an injury when, even as an injured guy, he could have stayed and at least helped the tribe somewhat. We immediately learn that Ankle-Jeff has been waiting to tell us for some time that people keep calling him "Coconut Boy," because he turned his ankle on a coconut. Get it? Do you? That's his big line for the reunion. He worked on it for weeks. He gets called "Coconut Boy." And his agent is accepting offers! Anyway, once he gets through passing along that information that doesn't even answer the stupid question he was asked, he says that the decision was about his strength and his limits, and he knew he was done. Jeff asks about how Bobby Jon saw Jeff at least chopping coconuts when Kim wasn't even doing anything at all. That's got to hurt Kim, hearing people be like, "Ankle-Jeff on his ass is worth two fully ambulatory Kims." Bobby Jon nods vigorously, looking every inch the lost member of the Brady Bunch, weirdly. The hair is trapped in the '70s, not that this affects how smoking hot he is, because it totally doesn't. It just makes him smoking hot a long time ago, back when I was a little girl. Jeff asks Bobby Jon if he would have left with an injury. "You'd have had to cut my head off and carry it in a five-gallon bucket," Bobby Jon says of what it would have taken for him to quit. Heh. But he doesn't really want to fault Ankle-Jeff -- he knows that Ankle-Jeff has had surgery on the eponymous ankle, so it's not like he was faking it. Jeff says he knows Ankle-Jeff really was hurt; he just wants people to have to "defend" quitting. And, really. If only Ankle-Jeff had quit out of stupidity and guilt, like Ian did, rather than because of a medical emergency, Probst wouldn't give him quite so much shit. In fact, it might turn out that this was a sign of having become a better person.
Jeff moves over to Ashlee, asking her about sort of semi-quitting her own self. In her bland, agreeable way, she blandly agrees that she was too soft for Survivor, ultimately. "I thought that I was tough," she says, "but no." It's fascinating when someone learns the opposite of the lesson everyone else did. "I learned I can do much less than I ever imagined was possible." She may not have become a better person, but I suppose she became more self-aware.
And now...you knew it was coming. We have to visit with Jonathan and Wanda. He's still hot, although he can stop working that giant spiky 1998 hair anytime now. And she still looks just like...herself. The lady you almost feel guilty about dreading, but you can't help it. I love them so much for not picking her. Not that I'm surprised they didn't. Jeff asks Jonathan what went wrong, and he talks about swimming from the boat to shore, which is not exactly what Jeff was getting at, but...all righty. Jeff points out that Angie is "waving [her] arms," and so he asks her what's up her skirt. Angie says that although he seems nice now, Jonathan wasn't nice on the island, and that's why he didn't get picked. He didn't bond with people enough, or something. "I think you kind of picked and choosed [sic] who you talked to," she accuses. Angie is the only person on the stage who is clearly angrier about high school than Coby. Jonathan says that with everybody running all over the place and twenty people to deal with, it was hard to "form a relationship with everybody in three days." Boy, I bet you didn't call this as the smackdown we'd be seeing, did you? Angie versus Jonathan! The rumble in...zzzzzzzz. Jeff calls a halt, because nobody cares. Not even Jonathan. Only Angie cares, and that's sad.
There's really no way around it, so we might as well get through our discussion with Wanda about not being chosen. "It was devastating, absolutely devastating," she says with a wide, stupid grin. She claims she was singing on the way out because the tribe members all called out, "Sing us another song, Wanda!," which means she's not very good at telling when people are being sarcastic, among other evident flaws. It's this quality, however, that gets teachers through life without emotional scars. Jeff laughs, because he's really relieved that this is the only time he's really had to deal with this lady, and he almost wants to hug everyone who caused her to go home. And then he says, "I'm guessing you prepared a song for..." And there's a discernible "noooo" moan from the audience, which is kind of sad. But she sings anyway. Because Wanda, like the Village People, believes that you can't stop the music. Her song is to the tune of "Oh, Susannah," and the crowd claps mostly at random. She tries to sing a second verse and is cut off, and it's the kind of thing I hate watching, because it just makes me cringe with every fiber of my being. In that moment when her mouth is half-open and she is interrupted lies a brand of pain that people born cool will never understand. Jeff promises that, when we return, we will talk to Steph. Yay, Steph!
Indeed, Jeff's not lying, because when we come back, we watch some of the footage of Steph taking care of herself alone at Ulong, and then we are back live. Jeff points out to Steph that nobody had ever been the last person on a tribe before, and he asks her if she knew she could stand up to that. She says she knew she'd be okay in challenges, but didn't know how she'd take the conditions. Incidentally, lots of people thought Steph's Jersey off-island look was kind of nasty, and while I agree that I prefer her with the smaller hair and without makeup, I don't think this is that bad. It's certainly not as painful to me as the Jenna Morasca fake-bake weirdness or how crazy some of the others have sometimes looked. Steph looks done-up, but she doesn't look like it's unnatural for her not to be snapping gum. Anyway, Jeff asks if there was a defining moment for Steph when she knew she'd be okay, and she says it probably was her night alone, when she figured things certainly couldn't get any worse than they already were. Jeff asks her what kind of reaction she gets, pointing out that she's maybe "one of the most popular women, certainly, to ever play Survivor." Steph beams -- just beams -- and says she's "so grateful" for all the big love. She means me, y'all. Okay, not really. She says that people come up and tell her she's their daughters' hero. That's nice. And the way she says "daughter" sounds precisely like my brother-in-law, who is also from Jersey. I realize that doesn't mean a lot to you, but it warmed my little heart. Steph says she gets awesome letters from women. And even some letters from men. "Yeah, go figure," Jeff smarms. Because he knows Steph is hot. I have to say, I hesitate to attach meaning to anything in Survivor, ever, but I do find it kind of gratifying that they united their prototype of a hot woman with a really capable woman. Granted, she sucked at challenges of certain types -- okay, all types -- but she's a tough, tough person mentally, and it's a damn sight better to see a few admirers line up for her than to see them all spill their fandom blood for freakazoids like Jenna and Heidi.
Jeff asks Bobby Jon about never being voted out, but just losing the damn tiebreaker. He says yes, it's nice not to be voted off. "Still feels good, but you still lose," he says. "I wear my winning hat like a man, and I wear my losing hat like a man," he says. I bet Bobby Jon actually owns both of those hats. How much do you want to bet? His winning hat has a brim, and his losing hat has earflaps. Jeff asks him where his work ethic comes from. Bobby Jon says that he'd credit his family and "the people of Troy, Alabama." "That's all they do there is work," he says. Ouch. I don't think the Troy, Alabama movie theater is appreciating that comment, nor the Troy, Alabama public library, nor the Troy, Alabama gentlemen's club. And then Jeff bores the crapola out of me by asking about Jellyfish Lake, like, who cares? Shut up, Jeff. Bobby Jon found peace at Jellyfish Lake, blah blah blah, and is this why we're all here? To find out how the swimming was? No, it is not.
Jolanda. Jeff talks to her about being the first out, and she points out that her team full of "young adults" didn't really appreciate her wisdom as an older person. She basically claims that everyone between eighteen and thirty is out to prove that they know everything. I sort of understand her point, but she also needs to take a little more responsibility for having been horrifically bossy, because that didn't help her any. She says the team didn't want to be a team, and that she knew that the team would "self-extinct." Wow. Now there's a non-word you don't hear every day. Jeff asks Angie whether Jolanda is right about Ulong, and Angie says yes, the team didn't listen to each other. Jolanda jumps back in to add that Ulong also underestimated Koror very badly, figuring it was made up of old and rickety people, and that she tried to explain how the old people are wily, but no one listened.
Jeff asks Ibrehem about having changed his game plan after Jolanda left, but Ibrehem sort of bristles, saying that he just decided not to have a "strong personality." Not sure there was a huge risk of that. I'm just saying. I think it's Ankle-Jeff who mutters, "We got put on a cursed island," which is a little bit awesome, if not the world's best example of embracing responsibility for one's own destiny. And then Jeff announces "couples updates" after the break, and someone's "dramatic life change." I'm so bored with this stuff. I don't care about life changes. Ask them why they're all such nimrods! I am displeased.
And when we come back, Jeff gives a shout-out to the band and the music guys who compose all the weekly overdramatic music. And God bless them, really, because otherwise, how would we know when things were tense? Certainly not from the expressions on about half of these blank-faced buffoons. Jeff then asks Anonymous Jenn for an update on herself and Gregg. She says that, on the island, they had "a great alliance" and "a good bond," and that they'll "let the dust settle after this whole thing and see what happens." Wow, that was informative. It's like the end of Dragnet, if it said, "Something happened to this defendant, but it's all still working itself out, and the chips will fall where they may." And how about Ankle-Jeff and Kim? Well, Kim says that they're "amazing friends," and that they "hang out and have fun." Hot! Leave it to Jeff Probst to get to the bottom of all the really hot sex gossip.
Now, Jeff tells the story of Willard deciding not to tell people he was an attorney. He told them he was a mailman, because people hate lawyers. Well, can you blame them? Willard says that he had been a mailman once upon a time, so it wasn't a total lie. Well, it was, but...anyway. It turns out that no one knew the truth except Caryn, who is also a lawyer. Willard says that lawyers can smell each other. That's never been my experience.
Unsurprisingly, Coby has managed to grab the spotlight for himself once again. He explains that, on the island, the sumo wrestling made him love himself, or something, and then he learned not to disrespect his own desire for a family, or something, and so he started looking into adoption, and then his pregnant cousin couldn't keep her baby, so she gave it to him. This is where I try to stifle the part of me that's like, "She gave the baby to Coby?," because it's so mean. But anyway, she did, she gave the baby to Coby, and he adopted the baby, and now he holds up the baby's picture. It's a cute baby, and it will probably wind up really righteously indignant about everything, so you should enjoy it now, while it's asleep. Then Jeff says that there's one more thing to tell. And what is it? The baby is a girl, and Coby has named the baby Janu. Aw! After one of the women he wanted to kick into the fire! That's so sweet. Coby and Janu hug. She's overwhelmed, in that it was really weird of him, but also nice. And really, if you're going to meet a showgirl and name your baby after her, you're doing pretty well if you get away with "Janu," I have to say. So all's well that ends well, you know?
When we get back from the last set of ads, Jeff references the "newbies" getting ready to come on the installment, and then we see that the location for said installment is the ruins of Mayan civilization in Guatemala. They "harnessed the knowledge of the stars." Oh, and guess what? Human sacrifice! That will make for excellent challenges. And also, once again, it appears that we have volcano action. I love the idea of castaways living within a set of ruins, so that they can truly do some damage to something that can't be replaced, rather than just a lot of foam-rubber boulders. Jeff wraps up by sending all of us to eBay to buy memorabilia for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. And also, you should apply for the show! But only, Jeff says, "if you'll play with a broken ankle." Could he be a bigger jerk? Jeff Probst wouldn't go on air with a broken blood vessel in his nose without throwing an apoplectic fit. Broken ankle, my eye.
And...I'm never going to find a better sentiment on which to exit than that, I think. That will do it for Palau, for threecap season, and for another round of hilarity from the Mark Burnett Accounting Firm and Alligator Wrestling company. Join us in the fall, people. Because...human sacrifice.