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And we're in New York for the Reunion show. The pre-jury cast takes the stage with the others and Parvati takes all the credit for Cirie's beautiful maneuvers while Amanda says it sucks to be the runner-up twice in a row. But she's still with Ozzy, who has graciously forgiven Parvati and even makes fun of Denises of Survivors past when he jokes that he's been demoted to cleaning toilets upon returning home from the show. Probst can't get out of that line of questioning quickly enough, especially since Ozzy also alludes to the fact that Probst has also dated Survivor ladies. Chet comes out swinging for Probst as well, accusing him of pointing out that he was the oldest and weakest person in the game at every tribal council and praising all the young male athletes. He's totally right, and to Probst's credit, he admits that Chet has a point. As for Chet's rival Joel, he's still an asshole but at least he cut his hair. Jason also cut his hair into a girly bob, which looks much better. He's kind of cute now, I am ashamed to admit. Erik has the same stupid hair that he did on the show, and takes the many jokes about how he did the stupidest thing in Survivor history in stride and has a good point when he says that while he initially thought he was the dumbest person alive, he now realizes that he wasn't cut out to be the kind of person you have to be to make it further in this game, and he's learned a lot about women in the process. I have a feeling the stuff he learned wasn't exactly positive for my gender. Johnny shows off his fiancée and baby and quickly gets the brush-off from Probst while Cirie gets the brush-off from the supposed fans of this show when she doesn't even place in the final three to win the Sprint player of the season $100,000 prize. That honor goes to Amanda, Ozzy, and James, with James taking home the prize for the second season in a row. Kathy admits to going "cuckoo" on the show and seems much more normal these days. Mary is engaged to Ryan from Pearl Islands. Jonathan's leg is healing. Yau-Man is given almost nothing to say. Tracy's good, strategic playing is acknowledged; Cirie's is not. And just to end things on a happy, positive note on this Mother's Day, Mikey B reveals that his mother got sick just as he left for the show and died last month. See you season, in high-definition Gabon, Africa!
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!And now it's time for the reunion show, where some contestants are inevitably ignored and Probst insists on asking all the questions we don't care about and none of the ones we do. We open with a montage of Parvati's greatest moments, almost all of which can be attributed to Cirie, who didn't win. I'm still bitter! We go to the live show whereupon Probst congratulates Parvati on her win once more and we see the entire cast looking clean, healthy and gussied up. Probst asks Parvati if she was planning to play as hard as she did on day one. "Oh god no!" she says. Her plan was to "fly under the radar," flirt, and get the others to underestimate her, but then Jonathan outed her as a threat early on so she had to start playing right away. To his credit, Jonathan pretty much figured out who was going to win this game from the beginning. I never would have expected a Parvati win. Probst asks her when the idea for the women's alliance first came to Parvati, then amends his statement with a "you guys," so as not to give her all of the credit for something she had a lot of help with. Parvati has no desire to share the credit, so she says she and she alone saw how tight Natalie and Alexis were when she was on Airai, so she brought them in, knowing that there was no way she could beat Ozzy and James on her own. "The women that I brought together, we had this game on lock," Parvati says. She deigns to give some credit to the rest of her alliance, saying she couldn't have done it without them. I'll say -- without Cirie, she wouldn't have done squat. Yes, Parvati brought in Natalie and Alexis and recognized that they would be better opponents at the end than James and Ozzy, but from what I saw, Cirie was the one engineering most of the blindsides that kept the alliance on top. Probst points out that as the person who brought Natalie and Alexis into the alliance, she pitted them against Cirie and Amanda, putting her in a power position. Parvati acknowledges this and says that she was in a "safe spot," since both halves of the alliance were more loyal to her than each other. That's true. She had all those days to bond with Natalie and Alexis that Cirie and Amanda did not, and she took full advantage of them, unlike, say, Eliza.
Probst turns to Amanda, saying she holds some new Survivor records: She boasts the most number of days on the show (78) and she was able to win the final challenges on both shows while keeping the alliances that she made in the beginning of the game intact. And yet, she still couldn't manage to win. "I know! It's a problem I'm having!" Amanda giggles. Probst asks Amanda how difficult it was to go back to real life after being on the show for so long. Amanda says it was difficult, and she has "trust issues" with people. "And what does it feel like, right now, not winning again?" Probst asks. "It sucks!" Amanda says. Well, yeah. I guess it would. Duh, Probst. Amanda says she can't be too upset though, since the end of the game isn't up to her; it's up to the jury. And "different people vote for different things," she says. Now, this is why Amanda keeps losing. Because it's absolutely up to you at the end of the game. It doesn't stop right before the last tribal council. Eliza's vote was in the air going into that, and I think she was just looking for a reason to give it to Amanda because of how mean Parvati was to her. And yet, Parvati won her vote, and the game.
Probst asks Cirie how many nights she's spent thinking about that last challenge she lost and the fact that it pretty much cost her a million dollars. That's what we're going to ask Cirie? Nothing about her masterful game-play and all the awesome things she did this season? We're just going to make her relive that one fuck-up? Awesome, Probst. Cirie says she thinks about it every single night, of course. "Was that your only mistake? Your biggest mistake?" Probst needles. Yes, it was. Now how about we focus on her many non-mistakes? Cirie says she thinks it was her only mistake as we watch the terrible moment replayed. Probst asks Cirie if the women's alliance sat around talking about how easily the men were being manipulated. Why yes, they did, Probst. In fact, we saw them doing just that many times on the show, so we don't need to go over it again. Probst asks how certain Cirie was that their plan would work. "Certain things with certain people," Cirie says carefully, as we cut to a shot of Erik. Erik has not cut his hair since leaving the island, so it's looking as fluffy and Farah Fawcetty as ever! Cirie continues that she wouldn't have tried what she did with Erik on, say, Jonathan. They just happened to have a group of young, naïve guys who were easier to control. And with that, Cirie gives a shout-out to someone named Jean, saying she loves and is praying for her. I guess that's her mother since Probst says, "It's Mother's Day, it's all right." Though I don't know why Cirie would call her mother by her first name. Maybe it's her mother-in-law?
Probst moves down the line to Natalie, saying she "came out of nowhere" as a "raging fill-in-the-blank." She nods. I realized the other day that she lives near me. I am terrified of, like, accidentally ramming my shopping cart into hers at Trader Joe's and then getting disemboweled for it. Probst asks Natalie about the reaction she's gotten "on the street." Probst is obsessed with the people on the street tonight. Natalie says she's gotten some nasty comments on Myspace, but that's okay. Probst asks Natalie if the version of her we saw towards the end is the real Natalie. Natalie just says she was making a conscious effort in the beginning of the game to fly under the radar and keep quiet and subdued, since she knows that she is an outspoken, opinionated person and that could turn people off. "And when it was time for me to come out, I came out," she says. "Is that you?" Probst asks again. "There are a million layers to me as a human being. I'm a very complex individual," Natalie says. "Is. That. One. Of. Them," Probst asks yet again, getting impatient. "I'm a loving, kind, generous, amazing human being," Natalie says. You know, if you have to say that, it usually means it isn't true. She will acknowledge that what we saw of her is one of her millions of layers. Natalie: Survivor's multiple-personality onion.
Probst asks Alexis how it feels to be the only woman to be blindsided by her own alliance. He's sure it must have hurt. Alexis says it did hurt, and while she knows it was a game and everything, it did get personal. "It takes a little while for your heart to catch up with your head," she says. Fair answer, I'd say. But I don't think her head will ever catch up with her heart when it comes to losing out on those cookies. I'm really wishing Probst would talk about that moment, one of my favorites this season. But no.
Probst says this was one of the most unpredictable seasons the show has ever had, not to mention one with some of the dumbest moves. This brings us to a montage of the blindsides and the blindsidees' reactions to them. Ah, there's Joel's ouster. So satisfying! Then there's a shot of Ozzy celebrating that he found the idol, only to get voted out in the shot. Lather, rinse, and repeat for Jason. Then there's Alexis' shocked face. And then, of course, there's Erik giving away his immunity necklace only to go home. Probst asks Ozzy if he ever considered playing his idol. Ozzy says he did before every vote. But he thought he had Parvati on his side. He was friends with her before the show and thought he could trust her absolutely. And he probably could have except that he had the freaking idol, which means that any move anyone was going to make against him had to be in secret. Was he expecting Parvati to just let him walk all the way to the end and the million dollars just because they're friends? That's not fair. It's not Parvati's fault that you got over-confident and didn't play the idol. Even if you had played it unnecessarily, that would have been better than not playing it at all. Ozzy reveals that while he wanted to kill Parvati at the time, he's since forgiven her and they're friends again.
Probst moves onto Jason, saying his fake idol led to one of the greatest lines ever on Survivor: "It's just a bleeping stick!" Eliza repeats. Probst asks Eliza what she was thinking when she first saw that fake idol. Again, I'm pretty sure we saw this on the show, so why go into it again? But Eliza says that she knew it wasn't real immediately and thought Jason was playing a cruel trick on her until she stormed onto the beach to yell at him and realized that he thought the "stick with a face on it" was real. "And I knew I was done," Eliza concludes.
Probst turns to Jason, telling him "we adore you" -- that had better be the royal we, because I certainly don't adore Jason -- but that "we" couldn't understand how Jason let himself get voted out exactly the same way as Ozzy. And this despite making a huge blunder thinking the fake idol was real and seeing Ozzy get voted off while holding the real idol, and then finally getting a real idol himself. Unlike Erik, Jason has cut his hair. Into a girly bob. Still, it's definitely an improvement. He's almost cute now. Jason says he suffered from a lack of logical thinking and has no other excuse. He did wind up with a souvenir, though, and he pulls the now-useless immunity idol out of his pocket and says it serves as a reminder of his mistakes so he hopefully won't make any more. I have a feeling he will, though.
Probst asks James how happy he is to have people in his Stupid Immunity Idol Holders club with him. He certainly looks it. Probst says that, as dumb as Ozzy and Jason were, they "pale in comparison" to Erik the super-fan. "Dumbest move ever? Perhaps!" Probst says, while the cast and crowd break into sympathetic "awwws." "It's true!" Probst shrugs. Don't you sell him your sympathy, because he ain't buying it! And they go to break.
To play us back, there's a montage of all the "favorites" being trotted out for the "fans" in the very beginning of the season. Alexis says that it's challenging to play against the "favorites," since they've done this before, but the "fans" also have an advantage in that they know the "favorites'" game. Unless, of course, they aren't "fans" at all and have never seen the show before but were cast because the casting people thought they were hot. Probst asks Jonathan if the "favorites" had an advantage over the "fans" this season. Jonathan says they absolutely did, and at one point the "favorites" figured out that they had a year's worth of days in this game between them. So they were shelter-building, food-catching, cave-finding, fire-starting machines. I'm not exactly sure how being on this show before would make one better at finding caves, but I'll give him the other points. "They couldn't catch us, honestly," Jonathan says. Eh -- I went back and read some recaps of the beginning of the season and it looks like things were pretty even until Joel basically destroyed his team by insisting on taking out Mary and Mikey instead of the people who were losing the challenges for them. Probst asks Yau-Man about the disadvantages of being a "favorite." Yau-Man says that the "fans" know them and how they play, while the "favorites" have no idea who the "fans" are. Probst rather meanly asks Yau-Man if that's why he's sitting all the way at the end, and Yau-Man says he'll take any excuse. And that's all we'll hear from Yau-Man tonight, so I hope you enjoyed it, Yau-Fans!
Probst asks Ami how it felt to be "the first 'favorite' to go before a 'fan.'" Ami clarifies that Jon and Yau-Man went before her (like, way to do the math there, Probst), then says she definitely felt the game turn when she went out. Suddenly it was "everybody for themselves." Ami has played this game before, right? I mean, wasn't she the first person to acknowledge it was every person for herself when she was the one running around Malakal trying to get an alliance with the "fans" going? Maybe that was her other personality. Ami says "it's been awesome" to do Survivor again and she's been doing a lot of charity work with her fellow Survivors. Ami is always quick to point out what an awesome, caring person she is. Notice how she doesn't plug the charity itself so that we can look it up and perhaps even donate to it. She plugs her involvement. How self-less.
And now, poor, poor Erik. Probst says Erik was what they were looking for in a contestant this season -- a huge fan who studied the game and was star-struck. There's the scene were Erik goes bananas over Probst and then a montage of Erik's greatest moments, including that last one -- with a special bonus shot of Eliza's reaction! Erik says he "lost it" when he found out he was going to be on the show, because he's been watching it since it started and also because this was a chance for him to see the world outside of his small Michigan hometown, which has been really supportive of him. Probst asks Erik if he learned a "life lesson" after being voted out. Erik says he definitely did. He says that at first he felt really dumb for falling for the girls' lies, but after time he realized that he just underestimated the social aspect of the game and how close you get to the people you're supposed to use to advance. And in the end, he saw that the women are friends instead of fellow competitors. Probst asks Erik if he regrets his decision now. Erik says at first he did, but now he realizes he just doesn't have it in him to treat people the way you have to in order to win. He has morals, and apparently, the four ladies who finished ahead of him do not. I think it's more like he's still in college and therefore has no concept of what a million dollars is really worth. Give him a year working as a full-time ice cream scooper struggling to make enough money for health insurance and then we'll see. Anyway, the audience applauds wildly and we hear someone (I think it was Parvati) say "whatever!"
Probst moves onto James, but some ladies are still chattering amongst themselves over being called amoral bitches by Erik, so Probst shoots them his school-master "shush!" glare. We must have complete silence so that all attention may be focused on James, the powerful alpha male who did absolutely no strategizing and couldn't even help his team in the challenges that involved swimming. Shoot, James couldn't even win a challenge against Erik. Probst asks him, as the resident expert on dumb Survivor moves, which of the three guys made the dumbest move this season. James says that Ozzy and Jason were blind-sided, which is part of the game. "It happens," he says. As for Erik, he knew he was in danger, won immunity, and then gave it away. Probst asks for the word on the street in this matter and gets the audience's approval of James' assessment. And so, by the power vested in Probst, he now pronounces Erik the Dumbest Survivor Ever, and allows James to hand him his imaginary crown. It should look very nice atop those fluffy golden locks. Probst claims that three people were "forced" out of the game this season, although I only remember two. Apparently, Kathy's decision to quit counts as being forced to leave. Okay. We'll address that and the love affairzzz after the break.
Playing us back into the show is the injury montage. There's Erik flying into a platform, Jason wrapping himself around a pole (it's still funny!), Parvati falling into the water, bad weather, crappy shelters, crazy Kathy, the reward challenge from hell (and its attendant injuries), Eliza flying off a cart while Probst revels in her "absolute wipe-out," James' "potentially fatal" finger and, finally, Jonathan's leg. Jonathan winces as he watches that part and reports that his leg is better, although he still has a nice, big scar. Probst asks Jonathan what makes the game so hard, and Jonathan first gives his mother a shout-out because she's in the hospital and it's Mother's Day. Damn, what's with the mothers and the reunion? He continues that the game is hard for him because every day he's either firing someone or being fired, which people normally only have to endure once or twice in their lives. It takes a mental toll.
Probst asks James about his finger, and James says it's all right after therapy and antibiotics. Probst stays with James and asks him if he has any more cemetery stories to share with us like he did on last season's reunion show. Really? I mean, I liked James and everything but I want to know about the show, not his job. We're running out of time here. Anyway, James says he was digging around the cemetery one day when a crowd started to gather around him. Finally, a teary-eyed woman stepped forward and said her now-apparently-dead mother "loved" James' abs and could he take his shirt off and show them? So he did. Total mom tally thus far: Two sick, one dead. Happy Mother's Day! Probst asks James about his awesome dad, who's in the audience! Hi, James, Sr.! James says his dad is loving this and reading all the internet blogs about him, which are overwhelmingly positive. Damn right they are!
And now we have to talk to crazy Kathy. Probst says she applied to be on this show five times. Apparently, she almost made it to the Vanuatu cast. Thank God she didn't because I don't think I could have taken watching her eight hours a day when I worked on that show. And after all that, when Kathy finally gets on the show ... she quits. Kathy says she doesn't know how or why, but as soon as she got on the boat, everyone -- including the natives rowing them there -- seemed put off by her. Is she really that clueless? Apparently, she went around asking Jonathan if people hated Jews because they killed Christ, and then there was that big deal she made out of Chet being gay and Tracy having implants and God knows what else that we didn't see. Do you think that might have had something to do with it? Being ignorant and naïve is never cute, but especially not when you're forty-two and have no excuse. Erik is from a small town in Michigan, and he managed to avoid coming off like a slack-jawed yokel. And he's half your age! Combine her social difficulties with the constant bad weather and the rats and the raw clam and Kathy says she just snapped. "Cuckoo!" she says. Well, at least she admits it. It can't be easy to tell a national television audience that you couldn't hack it and no one liked you. Probst says he gives Kathy credit for struggling through a lot before finally quitting. He says she should be proud of how she did because she gave it her all. I'll just have to take his word for it.
And now we have to talk about Ozzy and Amanda. There's a montage of their love affair, and then Probst asks what's going on now. "Well, I mean, Jeff, you know how these Survivor girls are ... " Ozzy says, and there's a wave of increasing laughter and gasps as the cast and the audience realize that Ozzy is totally alluding to Probst and the Survivor girl he was dating. I say "was" because as of fairly recently, they are no longer together. Ouch! Burn on you, Probst! Ozzy keeps right on going, saying that it's been tough since he got back, as he was demoted to cleaning toilets because he was too popular to be a waiter. And burn on you, Denise! We don't cut to Eliza's response, which probably looked awesome, but you can hear her "no he didn't!" laugh. Probst doesn't like this tomfoolery, so he asks Amanda for a straight answer, certain that she's too dumb to give a witty response. He's right! Amanda giggles that they are still together. I was kind of expecting a proposal at this point, but none is forthcoming, which is just fine by me.
Probst says there is yet another love story that no one knows about. He throws it to Mary, who says that she met Ryan O. from Pearl Islands through Jon, and he asked her to marry him three days after their first date. And there's Ryan in the audience, looking more like Henry Fonda than ever before. The couple exchange "I love you's!" and Probst congratulates them. I give them two more months. Hope Ryan didn't spend too much on the ring. You see, Jon has a hand in this relationship, and all things he touches turn to shit. So there you go.
Probst says it's time to announce the Sprint Player of the Season and IT HAD BETTER BE CIRIE. Eliza gasps and crosses her fingers sarcastically. And the top three are: Amanda, who pretends to look surprised as a piano starts randomly playing and the audience cheers; Ozzy, who is not at all surprised because he thinks he's the shit; and finally ... James. WHAT! James??? Really, America? Really? The audience goes wild as James' name is announced, so it's no surprise when Probst announces that he is the winner of the $100,000 prize. Apparently, he won this last year, too. He's shocked. Not bad for a guy who thinks he'd be the least likely to get invited to a family dinner. James, Sr. is thrilled. James thanks the American public for its terrible decision, making and Probst moves things along.
And now we have to talk to Jon. Probst hates Jon and his time on the show so he doesn't want to talk about that. Instead he wants to ask Jon about his fiancée and new baby. Jon points them out in he audience, being sure to mention that Michelle was on America's Top Model. You may remember her as the woman whose face almost fell off when she got some weird flesh-eating bacterial infection. I remember her as the contestant who thought she would be awesome at the acting challenge and then busted out a hilariously bad cockney accent that I still occasionally imitate to this day. Because my heart is not made of stone, I'll admit that their baby is cute. Jon asks Probst to hug his daughter, but Probst ignores him and says he's glad that Jon could "create something so beautiful." Eh, maybe he'll hug the baby after the show. I have to say, I love how Probst doesn't even bother to disguise his contempt for Jon. I wonder if he has that clip of Bonaduce destroying Jon's mouth playing on loop in his house.
Probst says they also need to talk about one of his personal favorite Survivor couples ever: Joel and Chet. They take this in stride with a manly handshake. Oh, Joel got himself a haircut! It's a buzz cut and it still looks bad, but is a definite improvement. Then we have to watch the challenge where Joel almost killed Chet and didn't care. Probst asks Joel what was worse to go back to the guys in the firehouse with: Getting blindsided or being outlasted by Chet. Joel just shakes his head and shrugs before saying it was a "very good edit." Edit, schmedit, Probst says; Chet is clearly sitting to Joel's left, which means he lasted longer than Joel. Joel says he had a great time on the show and no one from the firehouse has made fun of him. In fact, that's their favorite scene on the show. Oh, great. If you're a "weak" person in Phoenix, Arizona, you'd better make sure you don't get caught in a fire, because Joel and his cronies will let you burn to death and probably laugh as you do!
Fortunately, Probst takes leave of Joel so we never have to deal with him again and turns to Chet, saying that he may have given Chet a hard time at tribal council, but Chet outlasted a lot of players. Chet says Probst never let a tribal council go by without reminding everyone that Chet was the oldest and weakest person there and that athletic agility was the most awesome thing ever. Oh ho ho! Raking Probst over the coals, and deservedly so! Chet says he must have read the Survivor manuals a little bit better than everyone else. Probst doesn't deny any of Chet's accusations at all, so maybe he saw the show and realized he was a dick to Chet and this is his way of making amends? I've never seen a sort-of-humble Probst before. Perhaps with long hair comes self-awareness.
Probst turns to Tracy and says he thinks she was underrated. This is also "the word on the street." He says she was a victim of the way the numbers fell and asks her if she has any advice for future players who find themselves in a similar situation. Tracy says she doesn't think she could've done anything differently; she even begged Cirie not to vote for her at the end but Cirie wouldn't budge. Tracy says her advice is to own your time on Survivor, no matter what happens. You can't complain about what you should've done or what could've happened. Just "suck it up and take it," she says. I remember what a good player Tracy was and the respect I had for Chet for telling Probst off disappears as I remember that if Chet hadn't told everyone to vote him off so he could tend to his grevious heel wound, she might have gone a lot further.
Probst says he wants to talk to Mikey B. last because it's Mother's Day and he knows how much Mikey B.'s mother wanted her son to be on the show and how proud she was when he made it on. But she isn't here, and Probst wants Mikey to tell us why. Honestly I don't want to know; it's going to be awful, isn't it? We've already had two sick mothers and one dead one; I don't want to add to the tally. Mikey says his mother got sick right when he was about to go on the show but didn't tell him because she didn't want him to give up his trip. She died last month. But he feels like she's still here. He says he loves her and wishes her a happy Mother's Day. And with that, we go back to Probst and his dimples. He's completely unfazed by the downer note and says we'll get a sneak preview of season after the break.
And here's the preview. Probst starts it off by saying that every day, millions of Americans go about their familiar day in familiar surroundings. Then we see a picture of the Earth with America clearly marked (because otherwise we'd have no idea where it was) and I started to think that we're going to see Survivor: Mississippi or something. But no, it's just pointless filler. The globe spins and lands in Gabon, Africa, where eighteen contestants will play to win one million dollars. There are the animals we're sure to see symbolically roaming around on the b-roll. There are the native tribes we will no doubt visit, pretending that their ceremonial dress and customs are indicative of how they actually live today. There's the "pure, untouched wilderness" the contestants will destroy by making shelters and burning them down, not to mention the camera crew and all the trash they'll leave. Probst also claims that we'll see "surfing hippos," although the hippos they show get nailed by a wave and don't surf at all. Meanwhile, elephants and gorillas hang out together while "leopards keep watch." What is this, The Lion King? We all know damn well that these animals do not chill together, and even if they did, they wouldn't be going near the contestants. Whatever. It'll be shot in HD; that's "high-definition," the graphic says. And while I'm sure the scenery will look absolutely gorgeous, I don't know how awesome those ragged, hairy, dirty contestants will look. I guess we'll find out this fall!
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