The reunion shows are so bad, but never moreso than when Probst has a few favorites in the cast who he talks to while ignoring everyone else. And that's how this one goes, as Probst only wants to hear from Rob, Matt, Phillip, and, of course, Li'l Russell, whose camera time is blessedly short. There are a few interesting revelations, too: it turns out that Natalie and Ashley knew about Rob's idol all along and that's why they didn't align with Andrea when they had the chance. We find out that Grant has hard feelings against Rob and Li'l Russell has hard feelings against everyone. Matt still loves God and Mike loves the Marines. Phillip really was in the Army and has the very nerdy photo to prove it, and he may well have been a Federal Agent as well, as Probst interviews Diane Hardy, a current Federal Agent and former training academy classmate of Phillip's who says that he is for real. And that's how I lost all faith in our government if I ever had any in the first place.
I've also lost all faith in this show, as Probst announces that season is going to follow the exact same terrible format this one did, even featuring the return of two former contestants. And speaking of former contestants returning, David manages to give Season 18's first boot Carolina more camera time that the current season's first boot gets when he proposes to her and she reluctantly says yes. She also says a few swear words, not all of which were edited out. We'll see if they're still together by the time the season premieres. Oh, and Rob won the Fan Favorite $100,000 prize, of course. No one else had a chance. Or the screentime.
After a montage of Rob's best moments this season (I don't know how they managed to whittle this down to just a few clips when the entire season was basically a Rob is Awesome Clip Show), we begin the reunion portion of the evening. Probst has changed out of that stupid safari shirt he insists on wearing for the first five minutes of the live show and asks Rob if he had any hope of winning this game when it began. Rob says that he figured if he could get past the first few votes and win his tribemates over, then he would have at least "a shot." He says he was really nervous on the first day, but when Kristina (who we see in a brief glimpse cut off like all of her hair) went off looking for the idol and put a target on her back, he had the chance to weasel his way into the tribe and help them build the shelter and show that his experience could be a valuable asset to them. Probst asks Rob why he picked the allies that he did. "Loyalty," Rob says immediately. Really? I could have sworn it was "stupidity" and "obviously never having seen this show before." He says he picked Natalie out as being really young and needing someone to help her through this game who would be loyal to him in return. Probst says it was bizarre to him how no one in his alliance seemed to talk to anyone else about anything game-related. "It was almost cult-like," he says. Rob says he worked very hard to make that happen, saying he would check in with everyone on the tribe and find out who they were talking to and what about. Apparently, no one else on his tribe wanted to or thought of doing that.
Probst then manages to turn his gaze away from Rob and ask Ashley why the girls didn't get together against Rob. Ashley explains that the one real opportunity they had to do that -- when Andrea came back from Redemption Island -- was also the last time Rob could play his idol. Which, by the way, she and Natalie knew he had. Yeah. The editors decided not to tell us that. I guess it added some suspense and made it possible that the girls would try to team up against Rob, but it also made them look like Rob slave morons. And I don't like it when a reality show leaves out gaping holes in reality. I mean, I know they all do that and I should be used to it by now, but I always thought of Survivor as better than most of them. But I guess it isn't anymore. Also, Natalie and Ashley are still Rob slave morons even though they knew about the idol because they didn't even think about blindsiding him out until the one time when he was almost sure to use it. Ashley says that knowing that Rob had the idol and having immunity herself, she thought staying loyal to Rob and voting Andrea out was her best move. Probst cuts her off to point out that Rob's older daughter has been making noise during Ashley's one moment to speak. Yes, even Rob's children are camerawhores. He is raising them well. I can't wait to see them on Season 56. We get a shot of the family unit of Amber, the baby, and the 2-year-old, and Probst tells Amber that if she needs to leave because the children get too loud, she can "just skedaddle. It's fine. No hard feelings." Yeah, I'll bet Probst would love it if Amber left. Then he could have more alone time with his precious Rob.
Probst tears himself away from Rob and Rob's family to ask Andrea a question. About Rob. "What do you take from how Rob played?" he asks her. Andrea says that Rob's game was indeed "brilliant" and that he would build relationships with his allies individually and make them all feel special and uniquely close to him. Probst asks Andrea how she would play if she got the chance to be on this show again, having now learned from the amazing Rob what to do. Andrea says she would constantly check in with everyone else and never feel comfortable.
That's enough of these other, non-Rob people. Probst asks Rob about Phillip and what he "saw" in Phillip that no one else did. Isn't it obvious? He saw that no one would vote for Phillip in a million years except for an illiterate hairy farmer. Rob is kinder than that, though, saying that Phillip is a "loveable guy" who just wants to be listened to. He was always talking about how he had like 11 siblings, and Rob figured that meant that as a kid, he was constantly fighting for his parents' attention and to be heard. All Rob had to do was give him some of that attention and love he was so desperate for and Phillip would be loyal to him until the end. Wow, way to make Phillip sound like a pathetic child. Rob does admit, though, that Phillip was not always a "picnic" to be around, but while everyone else dug into him and yelled at him for that, Rob always pretended to be on his side. The audience applauds this, like Rob is some kind of hero for propping up the weird asshole in his tribe for purely selfish reasons. Phillip just nods along, so Probst asks him why he seems so "reserved" tonight. Phillip says he's just being "attentive" and "listening." That is not the fun crazy answer Probst was hoping for, so he asks Phillip to tell him what Probst is thinking right now. "What you're thinking right now is 'what is Phillip thinking?'" Phillip says. This gets a laugh, so Probst moves on.
He asks Natalie about her loyalty to Rob and if she ever considered betraying him. Oh my god, surely there's something we can talk to these contestants about besides their relationship with Rob? Or maybe not, since the editing didn't develop any of the contestants except Phillip beyond their interactions with Rob so we don't really know anything else about them. Natalie says that she didn't, since she knew that Rob had that idol and the only time she apparently ever considered defying Rob was that one time when he was sure to play it. Probst asks Natalie how she felt during the Final Tribal Council when everyone was so mean to her, especially Julie. "As a mother yourself, those are pretty tough words to say to a young woman," Probst lectures Julie. You see, he hates Julie because of how she didn't side with Li'l Russell when she had the chance. Natalie says that she's a strong person now and being on the show taught her to take what people say to and about her with a "grain of salt" and move on. Everyone applauds this. Oh, please. Natalie was going to learn that anyway, what with being an adult now and all. You don't need to go on a reality show for that life lesson. You just need to be out of high school for a few years. Probst asks Julie if she regrets being such a bitch to the beautiful innocent young Natalie. Julie says she does now that she's sitting near her on the reunion show. So, basically, no, Julie is not sorry. She's just going to say she is because she's on TV right now. Sure enough, she qualifies her apology by saying that she had to "live through" the frustration of being on a tribe with women who wouldn't align with her. Ashley is clearly annoyed by this and tries to say something, but she already got her only chance to speak so she has to be content with shaking her head and rolling her eyes. Probst doesn't let Natalie speak up, either, saying that the girls clearly did something right in choosing their alliances since they made it further than Julie, who is "back row jury." Ouch, Probst. Also, it's not like he was any nicer to Natalie than Julie was in the game. Remember all those challenges when he was relentlessly mean to her? I don't see him apologizing for all the tough words he said to that young woman.
Probst then asks Rob about his relationship with Grant and how sad he must have been to have to turn on his good friend like that. He asks Rob if he and Grant have kissed and made up since then. Rob says that he and Grant stayed in touch after the show filmed, but then around the time that the third or fourth episode aired, Grant stopped returning Rob's calls. Hmmm ... interesting. I think that's around the episode that Rob found the idol and took great joy in hiding it from Grant, unnecessarily so. My guess is that when Grant saw that, he realized that Rob played him for a fool for no reason beyond his own entertainment the entire season. Rob turns to Grant, who cut his hair (yay!!!) and is wearing a very strange outfit (red suspenders and an undershirt from the 1800s?), and apologizes if anything he did hurt Grant's feelings, saying it was just part of the game. Probst comments that Grant doesn't seem willing to forgive or have anything to do with Rob. Grant says that even though that was a game, there are times when you have to draw the line and the things you do are a direct reflection of the kind of person you are. "This is a game," apparently, is not going to fly with Grant. Especially if the thing he's really upset about is the stuff that wasn't part of the game. Rob didn't have to run around switching idol clues on Grant and make him look like an idiot. He didn't have to call his allies idiots in his interviews. That wasn't part of the game. He did those things because he wanted to because he's probably not a very nice person.
Probst doesn't want to see Rob upset, so he tries to repair his rift with Grant by asking if perhaps Rob is better at not taking things personally because he's done this before. Rob just says that he didn't want to draw any lines and spend his time on the show worried about whether or not to cross them. "It's a lot easier to say I'm playing a game and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to win," he says. But he also claims to understand why Grant feels the way he does because the people you end up screwing over are people you truly do grow close to and form relationships with. Yeah, which is why Grant didn't seem to mind that Rob blindsided him and whatever else he did as part of the game. He voted for him to win and he was friendly with him afterwards. It was only when, it seems, he saw the stuff Rob did that wasn't part of the game that he decided that his life would be better without someone like Rob in it. That's not being bitter so much as it is picking and choosing your friends well. With that, Probst announces that he has an opinion: Rob's game this season was "as close to a perfect game" as he's ever seen on the show. Good for Rob, but it's not much of an accomplishment considering the people he was playing with and how much more practice he had at it than everyone else.
Back from the break we get a montage of Matt's terrible time on this show and love of God. Matt cut his hair, by the way, and looks great. Probst runs down the records Matt set during his time on the show: most days spent on Redemption Island, most Redemption Island challenges won, and how he's "the first person to be blindsided twice in the same season." Um, no. I believe that would be Burton from Season 7. Apparently we're supposed to forget that Survivor has tried this Redemption Island twist before and it went about as well then as it did this season. Probst asks Matt how bad it was on Redemption Island. Matt says that his lowest point was when he cried all over that interview. Probst says Matt said he wanted to go home, but God wouldn't let him. Matt says God does whatever he wants and we just have to be respectful of that and let it happen. Apparently it's okay with Julie if Matt lives his life that way, but when Natalie took the same approach with Rob, it made her a horrible person and a disgrace to her family. Weird. Matt says that in the end, he was grateful for the "life-changing" experience he had on this show. He did learn some things, though, like that his strategy of "blindly following [his] heart" shouldn't also mean "ignoring logic and reason." Okay, that was pretty funny. Probst asks what Matt did with all that time alone. Matt says he has a "stellar Nicaraguan rock collection." Probst asks what Matt's family and friends thought watching him suffer out there, and Matt says they felt bad for him. Duh. But they also thought it was great that he used the show to talk about God.
Probst asks Andrea if she and Matt have built on the relationship they began on the show. Andrea says that Matt is definitely "cute" and "cool" but she isn't really going to say much more than that. I'd say this means that they totally did it at least once, but I don't think Matt would have sex before marriage. Or maybe he's a hypocrite? For his part, Matt says that they live in different states so there is a distance problem, but they did "have a connection on the island." He's being as coy about it as Andrea, so Probst gets pissy and cuts him off with "and we'll be friends forever. Okay, I got it." Well, at least he tried to talk to the contestants about something besides Rob.
Probst then turns to Mike and shows us a picture of him when he was in the Marines. The audience applauds Mike's military service and Probst asks Mike how Survivor compared to serving in Iraq. Um, IT DOESN'T. Don't even ask that. Mike says that his time on the show somehow "transformed [him] as a human being, as a man, as an American" and "helped [him] understand [his] purpose" and what's he's doing with his life. What the hell? Survivor should not be doing that for you. But I guess he really likes God now, thanks to Matt, and, of course, he really loves America and the troops. But to actually answer Probst's question, he says that being a Marine "does not compare" to being on Survivor, although Survivor is very difficult. You're just not in danger of dying all the time on Survivor. Probst asks Mike if his last challenge loss to Andrea haunts him. Mike says he came in second place basically the entire game, so I guess it was fitting that he went out that way, too.
We get to watch Li'l Russell lose on Redemption Island again coming back from the break, and I do enjoy watching him cry. I'd rather not see him at all, of course, but I knew that wasn't going to be the case tonight. Probst asks Li'l Russell how his fans reacted to seeing him cry like a baby when he had to leave the show after just eight days. Li'l Russell says the game is the hardest thing he's ever done in his life and he gets really emotionally involved, especially after playing it three times. Then he changes the subject to Rob, praising him for playing an "excellent game" and asking if he'll shake his hand at this reunion show, unlike their last one. Rob does, because he just won a million dollars so he doesn't really care whose hand he shakes. Probst reminds us all that the idea to put Rob and Li'l Russell back on the show against each other was born at the Season 20 reunion show, which makes the Season 20 reunion show the worst one ever. Probst comments on how Zapato wanted to be rid of Li'l Russell so much that they deliberately lost a challenge so they could vote him out. Li'l Russell says Probst isn't asking the question that "everybody wants to hear," which is, in his opinion, does Zapato regret throwing that challenge now? He's so certain that the answer will be yes since Zapato fared so poorly afterwards, but I stand by my opinion that they were right to throw that challenge because Li'l Russell would have torn their tribe apart anyway and he and his two ladies would have jumped over to Onomatopoeia as soon as the merge happened if they had the opportunity. Zapato was pretty much screwed no matter what.
But Li'l Russell isn't finished, of course. He points to Steve, who is sitting several seats ahead of him because he did so much better in this game than Li'l Russell did, and says he's twice Li'l Russell's size and had no reason to be scared of him. Steve mutters that he wasn't scared of Li'l Russell; he was "annoyed" by him. Li'l Russell keeps going, saying that all Zapato had to do was "control" him and keep him in line since they had a majority alliance. Yeah, well, maybe they wanted to get rid of him before he peed in their water or burned their clothes or whatever they'd all seen him doing in the past. Li'l Russell says Steve had no right to say that Phillip wasn't a man (did he ever say that? I don't remember that) when Steve deliberately lost a challenge. And then Li'l Russell starts rambling on about bounties on heads and Zapato not possibly being as stupid as they seemed and he's not making much sense, so Probst cuts him off. He accidentally calls him "Phillip" when he does it. Oops! How embarrassing for Phillip to be confused with Li'l Russell like that. "Maybe you two should showdown !" Prost says. NO. NO. NO. Oh my god, it's probably going to happen on Season 24. Probst says that Li'l Russell is clearly still passionate about this show, so he wonders if he will hold to his promise that he'll never be on this show again or if he's changed his mind. "It's a piece of me, it's a part of me," Li'l Russell says. How? I can understand why Rob might say that since he's been on the show over the course of a third of his lifetime and it's because of the show that he has the wife and thus the children he has now. And the money. And the career. But Li'l Russell has been doing it for like a year and a half. And he supposedly had a good life and a successful business going well before Survivor ever knocked on his door. But then! A glimmer of hope! "I gotta say no," he says. Probst asks if they should throw away Li'l Russell's phone number, then. Li'l Russell tells him to keep it. Of course. I'll never be rid of him. He is my curse. He's just going to take over every other season of this show until its mercifully cancellation.
Probst segues from Li'l Russell to another "polarizing" contestant: Phillip. We get a montage of Phillip telling everyone about how he used to be a Federal/special agent, and Probst asks Phillip if there was a method to his madness. Phillip says there was and that as soon as he realized what a grip Rob had on his tribe, he made a plan to try to get close to the man in control by being a total dick all the time so that he got all the attention and Rob would be able to fly under the radar. That may well be a brilliant strategy, but I have a feeling Phillip came up with it after his time on the show, not during. Probst asks Phillip what the reaction has been from people on the street. Phillip claims that it's been nothing but positive and people love him and think he's a brilliant player. Phillip would also like us to know that he played this game with integrity and never lied to or deceived anyone because that was more important to him than the money. The million dollars was, however, more important to him than wearing underwear that wasn't totally embarrassing. And feathers. Probst notices that people in the audience and even contestants on the stage are outright laughing at him and asks if that bothers Phillip. Phillip says it doesn't surprise him, adding that he never talked shit about his fellow contestants in an interview. Ashley can't help but laugh and point out that Phillip said plenty of negative things about her in his interviews. Phillip says that's okay because he said the same stuff to her face that he said about her in the interviews. Phillip is getting wound up, but Probst has to calm him back down because time is short and he still needs to address two more Phillip things. First, the race fight between Phillip and Steve. He asks if they've made nice since then, and Phillip says they haven't, but he wants to right now. "The specialist doesn't make a mistake," he starts, and I thought he was going to accuse Steve of racism again. But no! "He made one in this game," Phillip continues; "Steve, I hope you accept my apology." He holds out a hand for Steve to shake, and Steve does. So that's nice.
And then there's the big, big, big Phillip question. We see a picture of Phillip when he was in the army, and he is suffering from some serious unfortunate 80s style right there. Big-ass glasses! Tragic moustache! But it proves that Phillip was in the army, which I don't think anyone ever doubted. I do doubt that he won some kind of huge honor for cleaning latrines, though, as he claimed on the show. But that is never mentioned. As for the Federal Agent stuff, Probst asks Phillip directly who he worked for. On the show he used to be really vague about it, but now he says he was a special agent for the Defense Investigative Services (now known as the Defense Security Service, which a quick Wikipedia check tells me is not a federal law enforcement agency like, say, the FBI and its agents have no police powers) and also "worked with the Naval Investigative Service as an adjudicator," whatever that means. So I guess he really was a Federal Agent, sort of. He did say he worked for three different agencies, though, and as far as I can tell, he only listed one. And he was only there for a few years, so ... did he quit? Did he get fired? We'll never know.
And just to make sure that Phillip is telling the truth, Probst has someone from Phillip's past waiting in the audience to testify as to his Former Federal Agentness. It's some woman named Diane Hardy, who is totally sitting in front of Adam Scott from Parks and Recreation! How embarrassing for him to be seen at the Survivor finale. Diane Hardy is a current Federal Agent with a badge and everything, so the text under her name reads "Federal Agent" with no question mark. She says that she met Phillip at the Federal Agent Training Academy, where they were both students, and that Phillip was an "outstanding" one at that. She never actually worked with Phillip as a Federal Agent, though, as they were assigned to different places following the training, but if he was as good an agent as he was a student, then she's sure he did a great job. Diane appears to have more to say, but Probst has to move on so he tells her to sit down and asks the audience if they believe that Phillip was a Federal Agent now. There's a smattering of applause, and Probst says it sounds like people still don't believe in Phillip even after all this proof. Oh well! Time for a commercial.
When we return, it's time to start wrapping things up. Sorry, Krista, Stephanie, Sarita, Kristina, and Francesca! You will not be getting a chance to speak tonight. It's your own fault for being female and thus uninteresting to Probst. Probst says it's time to find out who won the stupid fan favorite prize. It's between just two people who got an overwhelming percentage of the vote due to the fact that basically no one else got any character development or camera time over the course of the entire season: Rob and Matt. Ha ha! Li'l Russell doesn't win it this time! With 40% of the vote, Rob wins another $100,000. "Amber's gonna go shopping!" Probst says like an asshole. Oh, ha ha ha, women are always taking men's money and going to the mall with it! Just because your girlfriends are all gold-diggers (cough Season 9's Julie cough) doesn't mean that's what it's like for everyone else, Probst. That said, Amber really should go shopping if the best thing she could find to wear to tonight's show is a T-shirt and jeans.
Probst finally gives Ralph a chance to speak, asking him about his vote for Phillip and if there's the chance that they could have a real friendship. Ralph says he thinks Phillip's a "great guy" and he figured out that Phillip acted the way he did on the show because that's how he was playing the game. Ralph doesn't seem to have trimmed his beard since he was voted out. He really should. It looks gross. Probst then asks Grant if he got married after the show. Grant says he did. He proposed to his now-wife at the airport when he got back (wait, what? Didn't he say on the show that she was his fiancée?) and they got married a week later. We get a brief glimpse of her in the audience and apparently she's a semi-famous actress but I don't really know anything about her, so I don't care. More Adam Scott, please!
Probst doesn't care either, and moves on to talk about another love affair between Survivor contestants and asks David for more information. Yes, David is now dating a contestant from a past season: Carolina from Season 18, who managed to be so freaking annoying that she was voted out even before that really annoying old lady. We see Carolina in the audience, and Probst asks if it was love at first sight. David says probably not, as Carolina apparently blew him off the first few times they met before, I guess, she realized he was a lawyer and decided to date him. He says that despite the rough start, things are going very well. "Yeah? All right," Probst says. Awkward pause. "How well is it going?" Probst asks. "It's going very well," David says. "Really?" Probst asks. "Yeah," David says. This is clearly leading to something, but David is obviously not making it easy for Probst. "Like 'very well' as in, 'gee, I'd like to maybe really make this official?'" Probst asks. "Yeah, I think that's kind of a good idea right now," David says as he gets up and walks towards Carolina, who doesn't look all that pleased about what seems to be happening. She's sitting right behind Amber, who gets to turn around and watch as David gets down on one knee and tries to propose to Carolina who, true to what little we know about her, talks all the way through his little speech. Finally he asks her to marry him and she says "shut the flipping front door" and comments on how this show is always blindsiding her. David's just kneeling there awkwardly, and she gives him her answer: yes, of course. She's not going to say no to the poor guy on national TV, even though it really looks to me like she'd like to. She takes the ring and they kiss, and then apparently she swore a lot so they had to bleep her. Thus ends one of the most awkward proposals I've ever seen. But I guess David couldn't resists emulating his personal hero Rob and proposing to a former contestant during the reunion show.
After the break, they freaking let Carolina sit on the stage to David! What the fuck? She just got more camera time than most of the women who were actually on the show this season! Ugh. Probst tells the newly engaged couple to feel free to ask Rob and Amber for relationship advice later on, like Rob would deign to speak to lowly David. With that, we get our sneak peak at season, which I'm looking forward to simply because it has to be better than this one was. Surely they won't make the mistake of having contestants return and a useless Redemption Island again, right? "Redemption Island: it was a twist that changed the game," Probst voiceovers; "and season, Redemption Island is back." WHAT?!?!? WHY? Probst goes on to say that there will be sixteen new contestants in the "South Pacific" and "they will be joined by two returning players who are seeking their own shot at Redemption." Wow. I cannot believe they are going to do this again after it made for such a terrible and boring season. Do they really love some of the former contestants that much? And trust their new contestants to be interesting to the people at home so little? Hopefully, season's cast will vote both of the returning players out immediately and they'll lose on stupid Redemption Island and that will be it. But they probably won't, because I'm sure the lazy terrible casting department is going to fill the tribes with a bunch of personality-free idiots who have never seen this show before. Can't wait! With that, Probst stumbles over his words when trying to invite us at home to send in audition tapes because he knows very well that this show doesn't cast anyone from those tapes anyway. He ends by saying that Diane Hardy told him off-camera that Phillip was definitely a Federal Agent, so "that case is closed." And so is this season! Let's hope the one is much better ...