If you will recall, the last thing that happened on our show was that Aras -- the touchy-feely yoga dude committed to the notion that you can use healing touch to make fire -- won the game. He hugged his mom with apparent enthusiasm, despite not being married to her. I don't really get it either. He should have run right out and hugged Terry's wife; at least she knows what it's like to feel close to someone.
In the wake of Aras's victory, the pre-jury survivors come strolling out on to the stage for their last moments of fame before they return to reading obsessively about themselves on the internet and appearing at the opening of supermarkets. Jeff, who can really no longer make fun of contestants with as much vigor now that one of them turned out to be the much younger love of his life, says all the usual things about how we'll learn if Shane is really off his nut, and we'll hear from Cirie, "one of the most popular Survivors ever." So, let me get this straight: this season will come down to the story of a winner, a crazy villain who may or may not be putting on a show, and a lovable underdog who didn't win? Let me get my doctor on the phone to have some surprise-handling pills prescribed, lest my being explode from the shock.
We return to a montage of scenes from the overly competitive love play that took place between Terry and Aras, including head-butting, poor-sporting, and Aras getting shown up in tribal council several dozen times by Jeff Probst, who relished the psychological equivalent of getting up on his tiptoes, peering through the slats into the locker in which Aras was stuffed, and asking, "How's it feel in there?" The montage rather unfairly suggests that Aras's "that rubs me the wrong way" had something to do with something Terry said about competition, when in fact it was related to Terry's lecture about the importance of his family versus the importance of everyone else's. When we return to the reunion, it becomes clear that if wee Jonathan Lipnicki was responsible for introducing "the human head weighs eight pounds" into our common language, Aras should be responsible for introducing "the human head is capable of gaining eight pounds in a few months," because Aras's head has gained at least that much since Panama. I'd suspect him of having cheek, chin, and forehead implants, except that he also would have had to have scalp, ear, neck, eye-socket, and temple implants. He's not even puffy; he's just completely different-looking, like he's a living, breathing, airbrushed version of himself. It's the kind of different-looking that makes people say of women that they've had work done, so either Aras has had work done, or a lot of women who have been suspected of having work done probably haven't. It makes me want to apologize to Joan Rivers. Ha ha! Not really.
The caption reminds us that we're in "New York City," in case we think that the audience has been brought to Panama. All sixteen contestants are here, and Jeff kicks things off by congratulating Aras 2.0 again. Aras 2.0, as it happens, is almost dressed the way I most like men to dress: a white T-shirt with an earth-toned snuggly-looking thing over it, but the snuggly-looking thing is actually a hoodie with a drawstring at the neck, so...no. If that were just a sweater, he'd look hot. As it is, I am distracted by wanting to pull the string back and forth in opposite directions while making funny "floop...fleep...floop...fleep" noises. Jeff says that Aras will soon receive a check for a million bucks, and adds that he has "one piece of advice: pay your taxes." Seriously, dude. I'm glad Jeff said that, because how ridiculous is that shit? Court is not tribal council, you dip. You're not going to convince a judge to lessen your sentence by being the one who can make fire, and nobody's going to believe, when you're in the pokey, that you meant for it to turn out that way.
Jeff asks about the rivalry between Aras and Terry. Aras 2.0 says that the rivalry was very important, because Terry was "an awesome competitor" who beat him most of the time and pushed him to do better. Terry is wearing a bright pink shirt, by the way. That is...an interesting choice. Aras 2.0 also points out that Terry winning immunity so many times basically protected him from being voted out, because any week that Terry hadn't won immunity, Aras's team would have voted for Terry, and Terry would have gotten his crew (if there were any of them left) to vote out Aras. As it was, Aras's team was forced to leave Terry alone, thus leaving the HII alone and denying Terry his opportunity to boot a person of his choosing, as he could have done if he had ever lost immunity. Gee, I think I remember someone saying something very much like that. Jeff drives home the point to Terry that the way he played the game really helped Aras win. Everyone laughs, because it's true, and nothing is funnier than watching somebody else's stupidity pointed out. A Survivor reunion is much like a high-school reunion where you don't have to be amazing or anything, you just don't want to be the one with the really bad boob job about whom everyone else says, "What the hell happened there?" On this show, nobody wants to be the one who most stupidly threw away the game, so everyone's up for laughing heartily at how much somebody else did.
Jeff asks Terry for his opinion of Aras, referring to their relationship as "father-son." I love the idea that any older guy and younger guy who despise each other with a vicious fury should be thought of as "father-son." I suddenly wonder how many basketballs were bounced off the head of young Jeff Probst. I certainly don't seem to recall anyone suggesting that Jenna Morasca treated all the wrinkly old women as her surrogate mothers. Anyway, Terry is asked whether he respected the rivalry, and Terry says he "respected it totally," except, of course, for the parts where he made sure to explain that when he lost, he could have won had the rules been properly explained. He respected the rivalry entirely, except for that. Terry congratulates Aras for having offered up an apology, saying that his own role was merely to "listen to what [Aras] had to say." So if you were wondering whether Terry ever concluded that he maybe also owed an apology for his role in turning things between the two of them into the groundbreaking case of Yoga v. The Military, also known as My Equipment v. Your Equipment, the answer is apparently "no."
And then Terry, trying to explain just how invigorating he found the experience of competing against Aras, says this: "Two mature guys, gettin' it on, strappin' it on, and makin' it happen. It was great." Okay. "Two mature guys, gettin' it on" would have been funny enough. "Two mature guys, gettin' it on and makin' it happen" would have been even funnier. The addition of "strappin' it on" -- strapping it on -- makes this truly one of the most unintentionally funny things ever said on this show, and nobody sitting behind Terry even raises an eyebrow except in apparent respect for his actual comment. Did no one hear the part where Terry said that he and Aras "strapped it on"? How can there be so many reality-show contestants in one place, and no one is immature enough to even look shocked? Jeff declares that Terry should also be congratulated for coming in third, and Terry straps -- I mean claps -- for himself, as expected. He applauds on the basis of merit, people; there's nothing he can do. Jeff explains that Terry defied a numbers disadvantage by winning immunity challenges. Of course, one could argue that Terry chose the worst way to approach the numbers disadvantage, which was to play so unstrategically that he put all his eggs in the basket of individual immunity. It looks kind of like a good choice now, but at the time it was probably the least intelligent call to make. Still, it's a lot of immunity wins. Terry came closer to escaping his own incompetent social play than most people could have, that's for sure.
Jeff asks Terry how frustrated he got, reminding him that he made the comment about "moms not being as important" -- remembering to mention the fact that the show is airing on Mother's Day -- and confronts him about having yelled at Cirie for putting her torch down in a way that did not please him. To his credit, Terry basically admits that Cirie was right that when he would do things like lecture her about the torch, he was actually mad about what was going on in the game, in that case because Shane had been booted. Terry quickly changes the subject away from his own jerky behavior and congratulates the former Casayans for sticking together as well as they did. "Yes, it frustrated me," he says. Clearly, the story Terry is telling himself in his head is the There Was Nothing More I Could Have Done story. He has concluded that the Casayans were simply too tough, so it doesn't matter that he never had much of a plan more sophisticated than "How would you like to make the game easier for me and harder for yourself? Doesn't that sound great?"
Jeff asks Aras 2.0 how he tried to start fire with his mind or whatever, and looks like he might bust out laughing himself. Jeff definitely wants to bring this up, but doesn't seem like he precisely knows what he wants to ask, because the question sort of sounds like, "People made fun of you for being a yoga-liking pussy. What have you learned?" I'm not sure how Aras is supposed to answer that. The way he does answer it is mostly to speak in generalities how it was "a rite of passage." Aras talks about going against "ultimate guy" Terry, and how holding his own against Terry made him so confident that he's (presumably) almost ready for his own apartment.
Jeff turns his attention to poor, doomed Chiclets, asking her about her "quiet game" and her "subtle game," and how she then unexpectedly managed to win F3. Jeff tells her that he doesn't believe her on-air explanation that she chose Aras because Casaya would have seen choosing Terry as a slap in the face, Instead, Jeff insists that she must have picked the person she thought she could beat. I'm not sure those things are mutually exclusive, in that part of the "slap in the face" thing, at least to me, was that she knew the loyalty of her friends would do her no good if they thought she...you know, slapped them in the face. Chiclets, who I think admitted all along that she was looking for the person she could beat, says that she figured that everyone liked Terry, so she was hesitant to put herself up against him. She says that it was "fifty/fifty," and that she thinks Terry and Aras played the best -- but she was only "taking a shot" at the victory no matter how she decided. Asked whether she thinks that she could have beaten Terry, Chiclets says that she doesn't know, but thinks the going would have been "tough." Jeff takes one of his only marginally helpful after-the-fact polls, in which people who have now had the opportunity to (1) reflect; (2) see the whole show; and (3) talk endlessly with others are asked to say what they would have done before all of those things happened. I mean, it suggests what they would have done, but it's far from a certainty. The poll allegedly shows that against Terry, Chiclets again would have only gotten two votes: Cirie and Bruce. It does make some sense, since in all likelihood, Austin and Sally were committed to Terry, and Aras, Courtney, and Shane all disliked Chiclets (Aras's being the only one of those votes she might have actually gotten), so, like many of us suspected, it does appear that Chiclets was screwed, no matter whom she picked to take to F2. What she really did was decide which of the two guys would get the money. Jeff points out that Terry was "that close to a million dollars." More, more! Rub it in more!
Jeff asks Chiclets about the bond she had with Casaya because he wonders how she feels about learning that she couldn't even have won against someone who wasn't part of her supposedly loyal group. Jeff asks her whether Terry's apparent ability to beat her is a sign of respect for Terry or a sign that she fell out of favor with her own tribe. Chiclets says that she certainly lost favor with some people near the end more than Terry did, since he didn't participate in voting anyone out. That's very true, and it's why I'd like to think that if I were on a jury, I'd take that into account and not only consider what people did, but what they would have done if placed in each other's positions. Giving the money to the person who was too powerless to really do much doesn't strike me as the best possible way to vote. Chiclets says that since she and Aras voted out the same people, she thought that she might have a better shot against Aras. I think she's thinking correctly; it's just that she was screwed no matter what she did.
Jeff throws it to commercials by asking, on behalf of a young and curious viewer, how Aras kept his hair faux-hawked all the time. Aras says that Cirie was his hairdresser, and that all the women would help prop his hair up before each challenge. I can't believe that question resulted in such a boring answer. I'm not sure what I expected, but it was sure something better than that.
After the commercials: The woman who was afraid of leaves! And: the 2007 GMC Yukon given to the most deserving person, according to the internet! Not that we're saying those things are related! Necessarily!
When we come back, we see the shots of when Tina discussed Cirie's fear of leaves, and of Cirie telling all of us couch-dwellers to "stay on the couch." But then, there was the wrestling challenge, and I think the show correctly identifies that as a turning point for Cirie. And then there was her fish! And the part where she underestimated herself! When we come back to the show, Jeff tells Cirie that in casting, they were drawn to her personality in spite of lots of good reasons not to cast her. He congratulates the show (and, by extension, himself) for including her, and the audience and rest of the cast applaud enthusiastically. Asked why she got up off the couch and applied, Cirie simply says that she "decided to take a chance." Jeff asks her about the first day she spent in the game, and Cirie says that she "hated all [her] friends and family" for not telling her not to go. Heh. Over time, of course, she logically learned to hate her tribemates instead. She adds that her experience really was very bad at the beginning, and that all she was looking to do was not embarrass the family by going out first. As Jeff notes, this is apparently why she worked so hard in the first episode to get rid of Tina. Jeff asks Cirie how the game has changed her, and she answers that she's "off the couch," and adds that it really did fill her with confidence, and she got rid of her fears of disappointing people and of failure. And of leaves, presumably.
We go to Hunny Bunny in the audience, who stands up and applauds. Jeff asks him how proud he is of Cirie. H.B. says that when he was out there, he was impressed with the way Cirie took charge of what needed to get done. He tells everyone flat-out that she typically doesn't like to be "too cold or too hot," and you get the impression that she's been a bit of a hothouse flower in some ways. He says that for her to be out there and doing this was "mind-blowing." He ultimately breaks down with emotion himself. Oh, H.B. You're so cute.
And now: Shane, who is dressed like an overgrown schoolboy, with shorter hair, a pullover sweater, and these giant, flapping shirt cuffs that appear to be a far more daring fashion statement than he is capable of pulling off. At the moment, he is only being asked about Cirie. His own crazy is for later. Jeff asks Shane about a comment he has apparently made to the effect that he (Shane) was very impressed with Cirie when he watched the show. Shane says something very lucid -- even cogent -- by remarking that Cirie was the one who "played by far the best social game out there." Totally true. He says that she was "dead in the water" early on, or so he believed to what he refers to as his own "delusionment." Jeff asks Shane about his comment that Cirie was the underdog, and Shane says that everybody can learn from her: "she is the everywoman." He says that if anybody is thinking about trying out and thinks they can't do it, Cirie would be an inspiration: "She absolutely wasn't going further than day six, and she put her head down, she worked hard, and she just got along, and then you watch her go, 'Wow, I could win,' and she orchestrated her own madness." Man, that was...oddly articulate and well said. What's up with that?
Jeff then moves on to Bruce, saying that Bruce's exploding intestines are probably the most painful thing ever on the show, after Skupin falling into the fire on his hands. I'm not even sure Skupin would beat twelve days of blocked innards, if we're talking cumulatively. Jeff reminds us all that everything was all stopped up when Bruce got to the hospital, and asks how long he was in pain. Bruce says that it had been increasing for about twelve days. Jeff checks in that he's entirely okay now, and Bruce assures us that he is, and also confirms that he has a new tooth to replace the one he chipped on Nick's machete. Jeff explains to us that if you make the decision as a contestant to call in the doctor, then you assume the risk that if the doctor says you have to leave, you have to leave. I would hope that there's more to it than that, because I would hope that at some point, whether you want a doctor or not, they'll bring one in and take you out if you need to go. I think many of us wondered whether that should have happened with Bruce before it did.
Jeff also asks Bruce about something very interesting: apparently, Bruce had some issues with his job when he left it for Survivor. Bruce says that before he left, he was "threatened" with loss of his job if he stopped showing up, but he left anyway. I have to say, this argument doesn't hold much water with me. I don't see why your job is obligated to give you time off just because you want to go play a game on TV for money. People are denied time off for things far more compelling than that. If you want to keep your job, don't leave it at random for a month. Bruce says that what actually wound up happening is that he was suspended without pay. Certainly, if I were another employee, and I found out that someone received special treatment outside the usual benefit package in order to go be on Survivor, I would be royally pissed. It's not really a very good reason to miss work, from the standpoint of your job. You don't need to go on Survivor; you just want to, the same way someone else might want to go play tennis in France. I never feel sorry for people in this situation. Anyway, Bruce is back at work now, and still loves teaching after thirty-four years. Well, thirty-four years minus however long he was suspended.
Jeff moves on to Terry, who has something to present to Cirie: a fishing trophy. Hee. I like that mounted fish, and Cirie likes it, too. Jeff promises that after the commercial, we will hear about Shane and his odyssey, beginning with his decision to choose his thirty-nine day isolation from his support system and his doctor as his opportunity to quit smoking. What a good idea that was, huh? Good thing he didn't have mood swings!
When we come back, it is, indeed, Shane Time. Jeff uses this as an incredibly awkward and ham-handed way to cram in a mention of Click, a movie that sounds almost as much like a movie recappers would invent as Taxidid. Somehow, this leads us into a montage of the full complement of Shane craziness, including the Thinking Seat, the wooden Blackberry, the shrieking, the ball rash, and the general descent into madness. Jeff asks Shane to comment on whether he was actually "losing [his] mind." Shane says that he was trying to quit a three-pack-a-day smoking habit and had very little water, which (I didn't know this) is apparently one of the things you're supposed to make sure you have plenty of when quitting. Thus, he was truly going out of his tree. (Much like Keith Richards.) Jeff says that he thinks Shane doesn't mind if he shares that Shane's been through AA, which I doubt Jeff would have mentioned if Shane hadn't explicitly given the okay ahead of time. Jeff has been working in reality TV for an awfully long time, and he's probably too smart to expose the show to the kind of mess that could create. Jeff asks how this quitting compared to other quitting, and Shane says that nothing has been as hard in his life as the first ten days off of cigarettes.
Jeff asks about the really, really crazy stuff like the Thinking Seat and so forth; was that for real, or was Shane "playing the social game"? Shane threatens to make me like him again when he gives an awesome answer that it was hardly playing the social game, given that he would do one of those things, and then he would go off by himself and think how he was murdering himself by making everyone hate him. He really does have the capacity to be very funny, which I suspect accounts for much of the strange reserve of affection that Cirie, in particular, continues to have for him. Jeff asks whether at some point, unlikeability became his strategy, and Shane says that it kind of did. He takes the opportunity -- again, to his credit -- to apologize to Chiclets's boyfriend and dad for his "everybody takes care of you" crapola, saying that he just was losing it at that point. He says that was where he decided to maybe make a Fairplay move and go for the villain spot. It backfired a little, though, because people eventually stopped reacting and would let him just go off and get over it. So it's like he couldn't be not-obnoxious, but he couldn't be obnoxious enough for everyone to want him in F2. He's probably envious of Courtney, who was that obnoxious without even trying. So anyway, he was screwed. Not hated enough! Who knew? Shane says that he thinks he was "somewhat likeable," and many applaud.
Jeff points out that Shane was initially hesitant to admit how hard being out in the wild would be, and he follows up with a question about what Shane thinks now. Shane cannot say enough about how difficult it is, and he says that he always underestimated when watching at home how much the "depletion" is. Jeff also asks Shane about Boston, and about what Boston's take was on watching his crazy dad on television. Shane doesn't even answer the question before giving a giant shout-out to Boston's mom for how awesome she is, obviously crediting her for the fact that he was able to go away at all and know that his twelve-year-old was in good hands. He wishes Boston's mom a happy Mother's Day. Shane, stop not sucking! It's very confusing! Boston is in the audience, by the way, and has cut his hair, which is probably a good thing. Cute kid. Shane tells us that he warned Boston that he was nutty, and says that Bird (Boston's mom) tends to be in charge of sanity anyway, but he did give the warning that this was "on a whole 'nother level." Apparently, Boston was surprised/amused by his father's issuing of a death threat in public, and Shane offers a pretty funny retelling of the conversation in which he confirmed to his child that he threatened to kill someone. Probably kind of embarrassing, even though it was Courtney.
Jeff now uses Mother's Day to transition into the most depressing, maudlin, and ultimately kind of gross part of the reunion show, which is the discussion of Tina's son Charlie, and the fact that he died, and the way that she was originally supposed to be in Guatemala and didn't go. And...the thing about this entire segment is that it makes me so glad again that she went home early so that the season wasn't about this. I'm sorry, because I know that makes me sound cold, but that's how I felt. I don't watch this show to see people's personal misery and despair played out in public. It's too much, and I feel ill-equipped to process it. Jeff talks to Tina that she touched everyone when she shared Charlie's story, and he asks her how she is. She basically tells him that you get up every day, but she makes it clear that there's really no such thing as "okay," ever, when you've lost your kid. Which, as I understand it, is what a lot of people say. Tina takes a shot at teasing Cirie about being evil for getting rid of her, and then Jeff asks her about what kind of feedback she got. Tina says that lots of people got in touch with her to give condolences and so forth, and Jeff tells her to tell the story of a particular email she got. It turns out that Tina got an email from another family that was somehow involved in the accident with Charlie. She says that she's become friends with the people, and it's kind of hard to tell, but it sounds like maybe it's actually the parents? Of another kid? I'm not sure. In any event, it's people who were involved in the accident who she hadn't previously seen or talked to. I already want so much for this to be over, because the juxtaposition of this and tribal council is too much for me to bear, really.
Commercials! Well, I'd think so.
When we come back, it's time to talk about the unpleasant surroundings on Exile Island, because God forbid you forget to discuss your gimmick. Jeff asks Austin how Exile Island was, and Austin says that basically, it was a circle of hell. He says that he was waiting for God to order him to grab up the "snakes and iguanas, two by two." It's funny up to this point. He then goes on to say, however, that it was "the best thing [he's] ever been through, too." Austin says that he and Chiclets "cussed and prayed." This all turns out to be some kind of enlightening experience about God, and that just doesn't strike me as very impressive. I mean, it's not like they were really alone or in any danger, considering the abundance of crew that was around, so... it's like, "It really made me appreciate life when I got rained on a lot." Whatever. Austin must live in a really hospitable climate, because if I were that prone to spiritual enlightenment as a result of inclement weather, I would have my own congregation by now.
Jeff turns to Very Pale Dan, asking him about the experience on the island. VPD says that being away from everything you know is a "spiritual awakening." Snore!
Courtney! You can tell that the producers have decided to make Shane this season's Fun Crazy, while Courtney is just Dumb Crazy, because she is getting pretty cursory attention. Jeff asks her whether she got anything positive from her experience, and she calls it "a beautiful reflection." There is more fire-dancing babble that your dreams are before you, and nothing else matters, and all of a sudden, it's like I'm listening to her sing a song about winning American Idol. Courtney insists that she "grew a lot as a person." I doubt that very much. Jeff claims that this statement from her "says a lot," which qualifies as ironic, I think, because her statement actually says almost nothing, which is its most distinctive quality.
My vote for saddest moment of the show goes to the part where Jeff asks Sally about her situation with her parents, mentioning that relations were very strained when we last heard anything specific. He asks Sally whether being on the show helped her to reunite with them at all. Unfortunately, the answer is pretty clearly no, given that she semi-evades the question by saying that she thinks that it helped people who know her see that she is still the same person, if they were concerned about "who [she] was." And there's this line about "choices I had made for my own life," and...yeah, you can kind of imagine what the possibilities are here, in terms of what went down with Sally and her parents. I think they include the usual Alienation From Religious Family issues, and she got a divorce, and you can probably fill in some possibilities. But it's sad, because Sally's sad, and she's straining not to say that they're being harsh and unforgiving, and she's straining not to say that nothing is better. You can tell that Sally doesn't want to dig the hole any deeper, but she doesn't want to lie. "Any other issues out there, they're not mine," she says. I like her. I feel bad for her.
As Jeff goes to Nick, he says that everybody who's left is only going to get to name one thing about them that didn't come out on the show. Nick claims there wasn't much: "Nick was hungry." President Beefcake: "I'm surprisingly cuddly." Ruth Marie: "My personality was way cuter out there than was shown on the TV." Hee. Misty: "I was still smiling, most importantly, and I'm never going to give up on anything." Way to not answer the question, bonehead. Melinda: "That I can handle whatever is thrown my way. Whatever it is, and I know that now." Jeff says that all these answers were fine, and all of these people have it reaffirmed again that nobody gives a good goddamn about them, because they no longer qualify as famous, and they probably cannot even get a good table at whatever the current bar designated as the reality-TV hangout of choice might be.
Jeff reminds us that Terry kept the car curse alive, and then says that they will be giving away a GMC Yukon to the person who won the audience voting. When Jeff throws it out for audience yelling, I feel like I'm hearing mostly "Cirie," and, indeed, Cirie takes home the new equivalent of Rupert's Million, so very much less offensive when it's not the same prize you'd get for winning. Jeff promises that after the break, we'll get the preview of season.
When we return, Jeff tells us that season they will be going to one of the "most stunning locations" the show has ever known. It turns out that we are headed to the Cook Islands. Which are beautiful, yes, but which are a tropical island again, and...you know, I liked it when we got something a little different in the Amazon and Guatemala. People strolling on the beach gets a little bit...you know, after a while, you just feel like you've seen it, no matter how good beaches are. I'm not sure what the theme is going to be here, unless it's...exploration in American history? I really hope it doesn't turn out to have anything to do with pirates. He also promises us that Exile Island will be back, which is...good? Anyway, he says that in the fall, we will see Survivor: Cook Islands.
Apparently, there has been some kind of a horrible falling-out with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, because the proceeds from the auction are going to Operation Smile. Oh, and Jeff encourages you to apply to be on the show. I do not so much encourage you to apply to be on the show. You probably have better things to do with thirty-nine days of your life.