Reunion

When we left our non-hero Jeff "Ageless And Everdweeb" Probst, he had just informed our (kinda) heroine Danni (last name: "Boatwright" -- from the Greek meaning "Who knew?") that she was the big winner of the million-dollar prize, leaving Steph "Hair Apparent" LaGrossa to bite down hard on the bitterness of defeat again, some more. The girls are hugging, and for a minute, it looks like they might make out, which you know Probst would love. And there's the love of Danni's family, because they know they're all getting cars or something, and there's the love of Danni's hometown of Tonganoxie, Kansas, which doesn't understand that she's not going to open a library there or anything. Then, the unimportant non-jury Survivors are filing onto the stage trying to look like they belong, which I always hate. They all know that they're going to be asked one question, and they'd better get it right or everyone will remember them unfondly forever. As all the celebrating continues, Jeff says to the camera that Danni had no alliance and won anyway, and that the unwieldy cast of eighteen will all be back in a moment to tell you a lot of stuff you totally don't care about regarding their feelings. Boo, feelings!

When we come back, we relive Danni's victory at the puzzle challenge after she bought "help" at the auction from a bunch of people too stupid to realize that they should want immunity more than cookies. And then we come back to CBS Television City (Mayor: Jerry Bruckheimer), and Jeff says AGAIN that all eighteen people are here, as if we're all out in the audience all, "But what of Brianna?" Jeff reminds Danni that she spent $200 to get immunity and eight days later won a million dollars, making that a 500,000% return on her investment. Danni laughs with gigantic fish lips -- where did those come from? -- and affirms that, indeed, that was her best move in the game. Not to mention, of course, everyone else's worst. She adds that the challenges at that point were turning out to be puzzles, and that she's "terrible at puzzles." Hard to believe she's any worse than Steph, of course, not that she would need to verbalize that when she already has the money and Steph will presumably never do another puzzle with the exception of Sudoku, the doing of which is apparently the law now, much like military service in certain countries.

Jeff asks Danni, other than literally buying a clue, what her best move in the game was. She tells him that it was probably getting Rafe out of the game, because he was so "well-liked." She points out that Rafe is "an awesome guy," but reminds people who have probably forgotten, even if they are (for instance) awesome guys, that it's a game and that everybody went there to win. Jeff takes this opportunity to turn his attention to Rafe and ask him why he "released" Danni from their F2 pact. Rafe explains that he wanted Danni to make a decision that now and five years from now she would look back on happily. I'd say that five years from now, when she is enjoying her million dollars, she will probably look back on it with quite a lot of happiness indeed. Rafe says with what he incorrectly thinks is good humor that he believed, of course, that this would involve taking him to F2, but it's okay, he insists, because he wanted her to "make what she'd be proud of." He seems like kind of a dear person, but I hope that in the future, he won't make statements he really doesn't mean about wanting people to do what's in their hearts if what he actually wants is to win money and be able to say that he did it in a way morally superior to the way other people have done it in the past. Because caring about the process itself -- wanting people to make a decision in the right way -- is very different from wanting the outcome that benefits you and wanting, on top of that, to have it presented in the particular wrappings that please you.

Jeff reminds Danni that, at one point, she told him that as soon as she saw the immunity challenge turn into the pole-leaning business and realized that it would be endurance, she was panicked because she believed she couldn't beat Rafe in a challenge of that kind. I suppose Rafe would seem to have built-in advantages when it comes to inflexibility. Danni says that she was thinking about her family during that challenge, and that she could "bless them" with the million. It quickly becomes clear that she's answering a different question from the one Jeff asked. She's answering the one she thinks Jeff was warming up to ask, which is about her fear that she wouldn't able to beat Rafe in an F2 situation. She also clearly expects to be asked about her style of play, because she goes on to compare herself to a "stealth bomber," embracing the internet lingo to say that she didn't "fly under the radar." She takes the position that you can't really fly under the radar -- you're just not on it because you're invisible. I guess the idea is to stress that there's nothing about a player like Danni that couldn't have been seen by people who were looking. Which is a fair point.

Jeff says to Gary that Jeff didn't see Danni playing much either, and wonders if she was "underrated." Gary quite accidentally slaps Danni across the face, figuratively speaking, by saying that she wasn't underrated at all. I think that he, again, is answering a question other than the one that was asked -- he's answering whether she did something wrong by playing a quieter game than, for instance, he did. Gary says that Danni was just a smiling person who worked hard and got herself to the end. Which he calls "awesome."

Jeff returns to Rafe and his frequent brushes with morality, all of which were the cheap kind that didn't cost him anything until the very end, of course. Even with the one thing he did at the end that was costly, he has made clear that he didn't believe it would be costly when he did it -- he still thought Danni would bring him to F2. There's something about people being like, "I acted out of a sense of my personal morality never thinking it might cost me any money! But I can live with the fact that it did." It's asinine, if you think about it, because if you didn't think it had an effect on the game, then what particular good deed did you do by sacrificing...nothing? Jeff brings up the eating of the sacrificial chicken, and he points out that, in the end, while they'll never know what would have been, Rafe may have given up a million bucks. (Nothing compared to what the chicken gave up, of course.) Jeff wonders whether all this ethical tug-of-war business was hard on Rafe. Well, of course! You know, it's not easy being the most moral person ever. I do think Rafe is very sincere with all of this as he explains how proud he was of all his decisions up to that point, and how he wanted to keep being proud of all his decisions. Jeff then asks Rafe if he was surprised to get four wins in individual challenges, and whether he was surprised to compete so well physically. Rafe laughs and says yes, and also says that he didn't think anyone else believed he'd do well. He says he was underestimated, as the great ones always are. In fairness to those who may have underestimated Rafe, it's not like that was based on stereotypes -- he did find himself entirely unable to make his way up about four rungs of a ladder, to the great detriment of his team. It's not like his reputation for wimpitude was invented out of whole cloth.

Now, it's time for the part where Jeff beats the crap out of Lydia, as he did frequently throughout the season. "Lydia, I'm going to ask you the question that I asked you, bless your heart, at almost every tribal council." Aha. I believe it's "How worthless are you?" Jeff asks it a little differently, of course, phrasing it as, "How are you still in this game?" Jeff, come on, dude. Lill. Vecepia. Eliza. People have gone to F4 despite being fairly useless a lot of the time. I have no idea why Jeff seems to think this is a freak occurrence, or why it seems to offend him so much. It's like he was once beaten by a short-legged fishmonger and has been holding a grudge ever since. Lydia, still a good sport, says that she used her mom qualities -- nurturing and caring for people -- and says that she also functioned as a provider, providing food or a vote or a clean camp or a positive attitude, and this helped her stay in the game. The audience cheers, and Probst is forced to admit that "there's something to be said for that," as if he could deny it, what with the way she got to F4. The other contestants are also all cheering pretty enthusiastically, so I think they really do like her, and they're undoubtedly tired of seeing her as the Probst punching bag of the season. Jeff says again that Lydia did always maintain her positive attitude, and Lydia, failing to note when her segment is over, jumps in to add more, saying that she wants to tell the world that being positive and happy in your outlook can bring you...not that far from winning, I guess. You might not lose as soon as you think. Encouraging! Jeff throws it to a commercial, promising to talk to Bobby Jon and Steph after we come back.

After the break, we replay the weird moment when Bobby Jon and Steph emerged at the ruins, and then we come back to the reunion, where Jeff reminds those viewers who are watching the reunion special in spite of having seen none of the actual show all season that this inclusion of past survivors was the "twist." Jeff continues to insist, despite the total lack of evidence that this is the way anyone else analyzed the situation, that the other people had to decide whether it was better to keep those two because they had experience in the game, or to boot them because they were threats. So, Jeff says to Steph, knowing she came in as a target, how did that affect her strategy? Steph says that she didn't expect to get very far anyway, so she just wanted to get "sort of far." She says that she decided to take a leadership position, figuring she'd definitely be booted otherwise, and to get herself into a good alliance. Which, she points out, she did. Jeff asks about the fact that she was "sort of the sweetheart" in Palau, and says that it's a hard expectation to live up to. Steph bumbles the question by repeating what Jeff said, which results in her referring to herself as "America's sweetheart." Which you cannot do, unless you are sarcastically referring to your tendency to snap at people and swear, like I would be. Fuck you! I am America's Sweetheart! She says that, for Guatemala, she didn't want to come in seventh, so she knew she was going to have to go at the game hard. She also insists that there has been no abrupt change of personality -- she's the same person she was when she played the first time, even if people saw a different side of her on this occasion. She says that if you had two impressions of her, you'd have to smush them together to get a realistic understanding of who she really is. She insists that she's "a nice person," but that the game is full of difficult decisions.

Jeff asks Steph if she thought she could win, given the sourness of at least Judd, Jamie, and Cindy, all of whom blamed Steph for booting them. Steph says she realized somewhere along the line that her "second chance" status alone made it very unlikely that anyone was going to vote for her. This, she realized, was one of the reasons it was good strategy for other people to take her to the end. She also points out again, quite correctly, that she and Rafe played precisely the same game, and that it's kind of weird that Rafe might have won and she definitely wouldn't have. It's interesting that in all of his abstract moralizing, Rafe has managed to avoid this fact -- that he basically managed to avoid responsibility in anyone's eyes for the things he did out of self-interest, because he deflected the blame onto Steph. It's a perfectly good strategy -- it's the Amber strategy, really -- but it doesn't exactly make you a person of unblemished virtue so much as a very lucky and artful dodger.

Jeff now brings up the one "meta" thing we're going to talk about this evening, which is the "starstruck" factor that entered the game as a result of people who were already famous being allowed into the picture. Amy, as Jeff points out, is already shaking her head, since this didn't affect her so much. Cindy, on the other hand, apparently told Jeff at one of the challenges that Steph was part of the reason she was on the show. Cindy, whose lips are not so bee-stung as Danni's but are much, much too shiny, like they're slicked with a half a pot of petroleum jelly, says that while she wasn't "starstruck," she was "inspired." Boy, there's a strong distinction. "I don't think of her as a celebrity; just my inspiration." Cindy comes off like a bit of an oddball here, I have to admit, and not for the last time this hour. She says that she saw "similarities" between herself and Stephenie (which similarities I totally do not see, incidentally, whatever the flaws of both of them may be), figuring that if Steph could do it (and by "do it," I guess she means "come in seventh"), she could too. People cheer, but it's not clear what about this would logically inspire cheering.

Jeff asks Gary about the fact that Gary definitely believed it was more than inspiration -- it was celebrity worship. Gary allows that he himself was a big fan of the show, and that Steph and Bobby Jon were two of his favorites. He thinks that they were able to use that to their advantage to some degree, which is just "smart play." Jeff says that this answer will not get Gary "off the hook," because apparently, Gary has shown some irritation over this in the past. Gary has told Jeff, it seems, that he thinks having recognizable faces around had a substantial impact on the game. Gary says that yes, for a while, people just enjoyed being around famous people, and were asking them all kinds of questions. He calls out the fact that Stephenie was on TV, and people just respond differently to people they're very familiar with from TV. Which he is completely right about, incidentally. You can tell that Gary is holding back quite a lot and being as tactful as he knows how to be when he says that "there were some people who were really, really glad [Stephenie] was there," and I think we have found the source of the animosity between Gary and Cindy, as well as the reason the show didn't explain it, fourth-wall-breaking as it would have been to see this conversation play out in front of the cameras.

Jeff would now like to talk about Stephenie's "stellar" record in challenges. She has participated in forty-six challenges, and she has won ten and lost thirty-six. On the other hand, she lived through twenty-five tribal councils. Jeff thinks that this speaks well of her game, at least on some level: "Hats off to you for that." The entire challenge record thing is somewhat of a BS statistic, of course, because Steph doesn't have total control over all the team challenges, and it's not like you should expect an even win-loss record in individual challenges where there are often four or six or however many people playing. It's still a cute number, though. There's not a league where they're going to tell you that 10 and 36 is a good record or can be spun to be so. Better than the Packers, though. (Oh! Unnecessary roughness!)

And now, because it is inevitable, we have to talk to Judd, and we have to look upon his "bit by a freaking crocodile" and "scumbags" business. Of course, when this clip has played, Judd has to tell Jeff that he was just being honest, which, as you know, makes everything okay. You can tell that Judd is one of those guys who has seen himself on television enough to know that he came off like the lone dickweed at the end of a season when everyone else decided that getting over it was the way to go, so he's going for redemption here, but his heart just isn't in it. Jeff asks what the relationship now is like between Judd and Steph. Judd says that Steph is "awesome," and speaks the immortal words, "Nobody hates to lose." Pause and chew on that bon mot for a minute. As the silence grows more awkward, Judd says, "She's still a good girl. She played hard, so." Jeff asks Judd how he's been perceived, and what it's like being out in the world and being recognized. Judd reports, "They look at me and they say, 'Holy cow, that's the big fat dude from Survivor.'" It's hard for me to believe they don't ever say "That's the big crazy asshole," but then, we are all influenced by our own perceptions. Jeff asks Judd if he minds being perceived as a "villain," and Judd goes back to shrugging and saying that he was "brutally honest." Nothing like a guy who's sure that being led around by your id is the best way to ensure that you're doing the right thing. "I said it the way it was," he insists. Of course, "the way it was" in that case had to do only with his own attitude. He wasn't "telling the truth" about anything except that he was a petty, mean, bad sport. ["...smanship." -- Wing Chun] If I resent you for a stupid reason and I tell you straightforwardly how much I resent you, it's pretty hilarious for me to then be proud of myself for my total honesty. It's one of my favorite defenses when people act like total jackasses -- "What would you have me do with my unjustified and hypocritical anger? Lie?"

Jeff then asks Judd how things are with Margaret, considering their rather awful blowup at tribal council. Jeff has never seen anything quite like that, because he doesn't usually hang with crazies. Judd says that it was "part of [his] strategy," and then he smiles, and somehow, this is...accepted? As an excuse? And people laugh? And he says, "No hard feelings whatsoever"? Somebody really, really needs to explain to Judd that "no hard feelings" is an expression of forgiveness. The full sentence when it is used in the declarative sense is, "I have no hard feelings." Not "You have no hard feelings." You can't punch someone in the jaw and then be like, "No hard feelings. Hey, why are you getting mad? I said 'no hard feelings'!" Jeff also says he just wants to clear up with Judd that Judd did lie, and that he's kind of tired of seeing Judd look around with shock, insisting that at least he never lied. Jeff points out that, even after being confronted about his lie about the idol, Judd still did his exit interview and insisted that he never lied. Judd tries to bail out again by pointing out that, the night before the lie, he was drunk. So he doesn't remember. Or he isn't sure. Or he went nuts. Or he was having a blackout. Or something. It might have been his twin brother Schmudd. The guy would really, really be better off if he would just own it.