Every season, as Survivor coasts toward its inevitable, filler-filled conclusion, the only thing we look forward to more than evaluating the self-tanning and veneer-purchasing decisions of the contestants at the reunion is hearing the jury speeches, in which someone inevitably forgets (or several someones forget) that this is your last chance to make an impression, and perhaps you don't want that impression to sound like "I am a ridiculous jerkweed." As we head for Sunday's Survivor China finale, we thought we'd take a look back at the most notorious "questions" that jurors have ever "asked." This is a list of nine; we left the empty tenth seat in honor of the most famous jury speech of all time, Sue Hawk's "rats and snakes" diatribe, which we don't even need to discuss, because you already know about that one. That one is the alpha and omega; these are the sad little letters remaining in the bitterness alphabet.
Eliza (Vanuatu)
"My question is: I want an apology."
It was always hard to tell whether Eliza was (1) dumb; (2) weird; (3) crazy; or (4) some combination of the three. She took a beating all season, particularly from Scout (who has turned out to be definitely (1) through (3) above herself) for being silly and useless, but she kept sort of popping back up like a Weeble, even winning herself a car late in the proceedings. She took a big step toward respectability when she participated in the ousting of Ami, a preening Mean Girl in Bella Abzug's hat. She got a long way by aligning with eventual winner Chris, but he found himself in the final four with her, social bumbler Twila, and trick-brained/trick-kneed Scout. Twila and Scout were sticking together, so Chris's choices were to take out Eliza or risk a tie. He went with the former while swearing up and down to Eliza that he was all about the latter, and when the watery rice hit the fan, Eliza was not happy at all.
It's not unusual for jury speeches to amount to a declaration along the lines of "Here is my behind. Kiss it and get my vote." It is, however, unusual for anyone to be as direct as Eliza was about it. When it came time for her question, she got up and lit into Chris for pretending that he was her friend, then announced, "My request tonight from the two of you is, I would like an apology." It quickly became clear that Eliza had chosen to take the cheapest route to regaining a sense of control over her environment by using her vote -- all she had left -- to try to extract something from the people who beat her. Chris -- bad in challenges but decent at politics -- knew that as cheap as a coerced apology is to ask for, it's even cheaper to offer, so he told her he was real, real sorry. Twila, on the other hand, pretty much told Eliza to get bent, an oddly admirable but impractical strategy that, interestingly, was the mirror image of Eliza's question -- mostly an effort to demonstrate that she still had control and did not have to eat whatever she was served.
Gregg (Palau)
"My question is: you suck."
After being one of the friendliest seasons in memory, Palau took an odd turn right at the end. Most notorious is Tom and Ian's rift, in which Tom brutally browbeat Ian into quitting the game and handing Tom the money, a jaw-dropping shift in tone from the genial season we'd all been watching. But just as surprising and disappointing was the jury performance put on by Gregg, who had earlier accepted his own booting with as much class and good humor as anyone ever has, in a terrifically tense and satisfying episode. It looked like a season in which being a gratuitous jerk was going to take a back seat to an appreciation of strategy and of friendships formed in unusual circumstances.
Obviously, when we reached the jury, Tom had already caused the era of good feelings to be called on account of bullshit. But when Gregg got up to make his speech, it still was joltingly nasty for a guy who had never seemed particularly vicious, even when he himself was voted out. It was evident that during everyone's stint at Loser Lodge, groupthink had set in, and Gregg's performance was evidently the product of a lot of griping and whining and way too much free time. Rather than really asking Katie a question, Gregg simply berated her for being "worthless" and "embarrassing" in challenges. He coasted along, finishing her off by declaring her "pathetic" and sarcastically asking her to explain how being so very pathetic was her plan to win.
Now, Katie was annoying. She was often very annoying. She wasn't blameless in the Ian drama -- she benefited from it, and she even joined in. She was not a sympathetic character. And yet, when Gregg -- conventionally handsome and smooth, easy with people, seemingly a guy with everything going for him -- made it so clear that he had really set himself to the task of hurting Katie's feelings, it seemed wildly out of proportion to her sins. It wasn't as if it his mockery was really about challenges; "worthless in challenges" was code, clearly intended to make her feel unathletic and ungainly and picked-last-for-kickball. Sure, she was bitchy and irritating, but by the time the jury questioning came around, what did it matter? Gregg was going to vote for Tom; he knew it and everyone knew it.
One lesson of Gregg's speech is the importance of momentum. Some juries arrive with an agreed-upon villain they will blame for their woes or take turns beating up on, and this jury had picked Katie. Once they got going, it was hard for anyone to slow it down, but interestingly, it slowed when Katie took some initiative, which jury targets almost never do. She declined to even deal with Janu, the wilting, melodramatic showgirl-slash-quitter, not one of whose visible ribs was planning to vote for Katie anyway. Katie also had one of her more likable moments in shooting down a hectoring, judgmental Caryn, who tried to escape her position as the jury's boring, uncool aunt by joining in the bullying. Knowing that Caryn couldn't realistically claim to have played any better (or even differently) than she did, Katie saddled up and told Caryn that the reason they were on opposite sides of the fire was that Katie made an alliance and Caryn didn't -- stopping just short of adding, "So suck it." Seriously, just short. By then, Katie wasn't playing for the win; she was playing for getting it over with and getting a few licks in. Katie was obviously a fairly mucked-up character in a few ways. But something about the way Gregg nearly spat the word "pathetic" at her survives as one of the most overt attempts to cause actual distress that any bitter juror has ever produced.
Alicia (All-Stars)
"My question is: [slow clap]."
Out of a season of sourpusses, Alicia was the sourest puss of them all. (Lex was more "delusional," and he will be dealt with separately.) What made Alicia such a funny juror to watch was that from the moment she was voted off, she spent every tribal council trying to stare daggers at everyone with angry little pursed lips, as if she had the option of refusing to vote for anyone and therefore was in a position to make demands.
Really, jury questions are about revealing the strategy the person is using to process the experience of losing, and Alicia's strategy was to convince herself that while Rob and Amber might have been the ones who won the game, she and the rest of the jurors had won the game of life. She was a terrible player, perhaps, but she was a superior human being. She even dragged the poor tribe flag into it, saying, "Now, you may have outwitted us, outplayed us, and outlasted us, but you have not outclassed us." Harshing the motto! Having decided to throw in, class-wise, with (among other people) Lex "Ink Flamingo" van den Berghe and Rupert "Tell Me More About The Rabbits, George" Boneham, Alicia clung to her tiny victory, assuring Rob and Amber that, in essence, she wouldn't have wanted to win if she had to do it that way. If losing was wrong, Alicia didn't want to be right.
It's one of the most common jury strategies, really, to use your question to show that whatever else can be said about you, at least you can still get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror. You can't buy a fancy car, you can't afford a flat-screen TV, and you didn't actually get into the Pirate Master premiere party to pick up your souvenir scabbard, but you can look in the mirror in the morning, and can they say that for themselves, those winners of one million dollars? Can they?
Lex (All-Stars)
"My question is: I will be obsessed with losing to you for the rest of my life."
Almost as notorious as Sue Hawk's "rats and snakes" rant is Lex's rather pitiful attempt to chastise the infamous Boston Rob at the final tribal council of the All-Star season. It was an evening full of lame, dumb speeches -- notables include Kathy's pitiful "I get it, I get it, I get it" speech (nicely skewered in the DVD commentary with Rob's dry response: "I don't think she gets it") -- but even in a barrel of rotten fish, Lex was the biggest spoiled cod of them all. What made his speech most painful was that Lex had obviously worked on this speech for a really, really long time, honing it in front of a mirror while he lovingly kissed his own tattoos, and it was still like dialogue from a third-grade play. Don't they serve the truth at Loser Lodge, Lex? Didn't anyone listen to your speech while you were rehearsing it and say to you, "I think you should take out the part about the 'greenbacks,' on the basis that Prohibition is over"?
The theme of Lex's speech, you probably remember, was that Rob had sold his friends out for a million dollars, apparently because in order to remain Lex's friend, you have to make it more likely that he can get a million dollars. It's sort of like being friends with someone who says, "You can't be my friend if you eat pancakes." And you think to yourself, "That's a stupid rule," and you eat some pancakes, and the other guy yells, "I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU VALUE PANCAKES OVER FRIENDSHIP!" (You see, in this scenario, beating your friends at Survivor is like eating pancakes. I knew you'd understand.)
In the end, Rob and Amber walked off with the money as a married couple, came within a hair of winning The Amazing Race to boot, and undoubtedly still laugh hysterically every time they hear the speech. We hope Lex, on the other hand, is doing the one worthwhile thing we ever learned about him, which is listening to really good music.
The runner-up in this category is Guatemala's Judd, man, who still wanted everybody to get eaten by crocodiles, man, and who started off with a weird question about skating and ended up lashing out at Stephenie for eating too much. We're guessing he's still mad, too.
Sarge (Vanuatu)
"My question is: I suck." (See also: Lisi)
A close relative of the "you suck" question, which often comes from jury groupthink where everybody decides to gang up on a particular person (see above, re: Katie), is the jury question that comes kind of from...nowhere, and it makes the person asking it look completely ridiculous, because it does nothing but make the suckage of the questioner extra-clear.
One very good example is Vanuatu's Sarge, who had already made it very clear that he was sure that Twila had damned her son to hell by swearing on his life that she'd stick with Sarge and then not doing it. Apparently, Sarge's God operates an enormous poker game of the soul, in which you can bet with other people's chips, offering their souls for sacrifice should you make an error yourself. This theory, I have to say, is completely awesome. Who wouldn't like to believe that if you want to offer a sacrifice to God, you can pick whoever you want, and if you mess up, that person goes to hell? I hereby swear on Sarge's life that I will not go to Starbucks tomorrow. Will he go to hell? I guess he'll have to see, won't he?
Sarge opened with some kind words about the fact that he was an honorable and upstanding person, and he therefore wanted Twila to know that he wouldn't even want to speak to her if he saw her walking down the street. And then he asked her whether one million dollars was the "price tag to cast [her] son's name straight to hell." He followed up by declaring that if his mother had done the same, he would instruct his mother to kiss his ass. (God: "Good one!") Sarge threw in an absolutely bizarre knife-twist by telling Twila that even though he thought she was a morally reprehensible person, he was going to vote for her, because he thought she needed the money more. It turned out that this was Sarge's little trick to test Chris and see if they'd still be friends. And not a very crafty trick, either.
Between the outright goofiness of Sarge's "your son will now go to hell" theory, his explanation of the precise circumstances under which he would tell his mother to go fuck herself, and his insistence that he knew Twila's son wouldn't forgive her even if she didn't, Sarge is the "I suck" champion. But a close second would be Fiji's Lisi, who used her jury question as an opportunity to quiz "Dreamz" about how many zeroes are in a million, apparently hoping to catch the less-educated former street kid in a mathematical error. She did prove a point, though maybe not the one she intended: she proved that before attempting to embarrass someone else about knowing how many zeroes are in a million, it's important to make sure you know how many zeroes are in a million.
Alex (Fiji)
"My question is: STOP TRYING TO ANSWER MY QUESTION!"
Alex wasn't just a lawyer. There's nothing wrong with lawyers, honest. But Alex was the kind of lawyer who believed that certain kinds of behaviors are expected of lawyers, and he didn't want to disappoint. Thus, Alex decided that he would personify every terrible stereotype of the Great Big Jerk Attorney, and he further decided that the best object for his rage would be...Cassandra. The great, powerful, malevolent, and deeply in need of a head-butt Cassandra. Sure, she seemed like a nice, passive, harmless lady who simply played a steady game to get to the end, but Alex knew deep in his heart that she was an undiscovered bad person, and he made it his goal to out her as such.
The problem Alex had was that Cassandra refused to answer his questions in quite the way he wanted her to. Attorneys know that you don't ask witnesses questions if you don't know what they're going to say, but either Alex thought Cassandra was going to say "You know, Alex, I am a bad person, and I appreciate the flogging and would like some more," or he didn't much think about it at all. Because his approach was to get all the way through his question, all the way up to the "?" part, and then not really let her answer. Because his question was based on a misunderstanding of what happened (he was basically asking her why she didn't feel bad about voting against someone she didn't vote against to begin with), she tried to explain the problem with his premise, at which point he told her to stop talking, saying, "I get to talk!" See, she was apparently misled by that pesky "?" into thinking he wanted her to say some stuff -- STUPID CASSANDRA. When she told him that she thought maybe she should be allowed to answer the question, he yelled, "You are mistaken! You are mistaken!" Cassandra passed up her best available line, which was "I'm mistaken? You're mistaken! THIS WHOLE TRIBAL COUNCIL IS MISTAKEN!" Instead, she sat there until the crazypants was finished.
The highlight came when Alex left Cassandra an opening to talk again, and she started to answer the question again, and he said, "STOP TALKING! Is that not clear to you that I said STOP TALKING? Maybe I should say it in Spanish! Edgardo, you want to translate?" The problem with this was that...okay, Cassandra didn't speak Spanish, but Alex did. And Edgardo did. So apparently, Alex's theory was that if Cassandra didn't understand him telling her in English, she might understand if he told Edgardo in Spanish and Edgardo told her in English. As a slam, it doesn't even make any logical sense. Among other things, I can tell you right now that nothing in the entire season ever became more comprehensible after being explained by Edgardo, who was not a genius.
Alex wrapped his speech up with an attack on "Dreamz" that featured a lot of figurative chest-thumping and literal finger-pointing, giving it a faux-dramatic "I could wish you luck, but I do not wish you luck, sir!" close worthy of an angry Judge Judy plaintiff, and then he called "Dreamz" "my friend" in finger-quotes, missing the obviously best possible kiss-off, which would have been calling "Dreamz" "'Dreamz'" in finger-quotes.
And then Alex was disbarred. Not really, but: I wish.
Terry (Exile Island)
"My question is: Didn't I deserve to win, really?"
Some people get all the way to the jury and still have a single agenda: proving that the outcome was unfair in the specific sense that they, in particular, should have won. The most expert practitioner of this type of hoo-ha was Exile Island's Terry The Pilot Guy, who got hold of an immunity idol and never even did anything with it, because he kept winning individual immunity over Aras, who was an irritating yoga instructor and thus was located opposite Terry on the arrogant prick color wheel. Nevertheless, at F3, Danielle (lovingly known to recap-readers as "Chiclets" on account of her enormous teeth, part of the long-standing reality-show fascination with long-dark-hair, deep-dead-eyes, giant-teeth maidens) beat Terry in a balancing contest and decided she'd rather take Aras to the finals than Terry. So Terry found himself on the jury, a victim of his self-proclaimed awesomeness, or so he believed.
Terry first chastised Chiclets for taking Aras instead of him, falling back on his well-known love of family (particularly his own) by hinting that later, all of Chiclets's loved ones would tell her that she should have taken him to F2. He then told them that since "outplay" is about challenges only (it...is?), he wanted them to rate themselves in challenges. This was a thinly veiled attempt to extract from them an admission that neither of them could come anywhere close to him when it came to challenges. They each obediently rated themselves, and Terry sat down, because all he really wanted was to remind everyone that really, it should be about challenges, because WAHMBULANCE.
Really, Terry's legacy has turned out to be his uselessness at anything other than challenges more than his greatness at challenges. Unfortunately for his desire to live forever (FAME!), Terry lost his spot as King Of Idol-Squandering this season, when James beat his record by totally failing to do a damn thing with two idols instead of just one.
Another possible candidate for inclusion in this category was Brandon from Africa, who technically did ask Ethan and Kim to opine about other worthy and unworthy contestants. When Ethan named Brandon himself as particularly unworthy, Brandon voted against him, swearing that he'd intended to vote for Ethan until Ethan was stupid enough actually to bash a juror while that juror was contemplating his vote. Something about Brandon's bare-knuckled approach, together with his cheery admission that he'd only asked the question about unworthy competitors to try to get a dig in at Frank, made it hard to see Brandon's question as hateworthy; sometimes self-aggrandizement is just good, clean fun.
Greg (Borneo)
"My question is: I am too whimsical for anything as pedestrian as asking a question."
The first season of Survivor really does feel different from all the others. Nobody even knew whether it was, you know, right to form voting blocks and discuss whom you were going to vote off. Some people thought it should be an actual survival contest. (These people were flogged.) Some people thought it should be a contest for the nicest person. (These people were killed and eaten.) And some people thought it should be all about bringing your wacky personality along for the ride.
Greg is remembered for three things. (1) Faux-mance. (2) Coconut phone. (3) Jury question. The Colleen thing was a really weak storyline, especially compared to later couplings that actually included people making out. The coconut phone now feels like the "You Might Think" video, where you kind of can't remember that people thought it was imaginative once. "I'm pretending to have a conversation, but I'm talking into a coconut! Call me, Hollywood!" The third, however, lives on.
Greg asked Rich and Kelly each to choose a number between one and ten. Rich chose seven. Kelly chose three. And Greg proved that he is way too inventive to use question time for questions. They're just lucky he didn't use it to do the hula with an invisible dolphin -- wackadoodle-doo! It turned out (according to Greg) that the number was nine, and that's why Rich got his vote, and that is why Rich won Survivor, and if you think about it, that's why Rich went to prison.
The truly great payoff to the "pick a number" thing, though, came during the Africa season, which didn't have an especially hateful jury, but did feature Kelly, another person who unwisely went for the "I will be memorable by not really asking a question" approach. She tried to outdo Greg by asking Ethan and Kim to choose a number between one and one thousand. Kim chose three. Ethan, because he was and is a complete idiot, chose 888. Kelly's number, taken from something-something in The Graduate, turned out to be 568, but her whispery explanation of that fact while she was voting was nothing but embarrassing for everyone.
Candice, Cook Islands
"My question is: One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war."
Some people will keep playing and playing until they find a competition at which they can win, and they often respond to a position on the jury by searching for the one angle that will allow them to look superior while, ultimately, being in the process of losing. Candice didn't really mind losing to Ozzy, because it's not that hard to say "Hey, not everybody is a killer athlete and a born outdoorsman." But she was angry as hell about being outplayed by Yul, because "the smart one" is the spot she wanted, and she didn't get it...at all. So she challenged Yul to answer a question with a "yes" or "no," making it one that couldn't reasonably be answered "yes" or "no": "My impression is that you have been shamelessly working this jury. Is that true?" She told him that if he said anything other than one word -- "yes" or "no" -- in response to her question, she wouldn't vote for him. Yul balked, because "shameless" was a value judgment Candice attached to something he legitimately did, and he knew that saying "yes" meant agreeing to her judgment, but saying "no" would read as denying that he was trying to get jury votes, which was the kind of weaseling she was accusing him of. So he squinted hard and said, "Yes." Having been cut off from attacking him by his unexpectedly going along with her dumb requirements, Candice sarcastically told him how hard she knew this was for him. In response to that comment, Yul good-naturedly tried to explain the value judgment inherent in "shameless," and she decided that broke her rules, too. Apparently, Yul wasn't allowed to speak ever.
Seeing Candice attempt to reach "smart and insightful" and wind up at "bitterly envious" was, in the long run, mostly a satisfying thing, particularly since Yul wound up winning. But it's a great example of the fact that every now and then, the haters really are just jealous.