Fri, April 15, 2005

This week's episode of Survivor begins exactly the way I'd hoped it would, starting about five weeks ago: with Stephenie all on her own at Ulong. (You could tell she was a little shocked to be sent back there. After TribCon's first-ever individual immunity challenge, she really expected to be sent right on to Koror: "But, Probst! What happens if Ulong loses immunity next week?") As ridiculous as the one-sided immunity landslide was, I desperately wanted it to keep happening, because Stephenie deserved to be the last one standing and she deserved to merge with Koror all on her own. In a group (even a group of two), there would have been a necessary struggle, and it would make more sense to vote off the Ulong faction one by one – as is the custom, post-merge. But on her own, it's more like she's the sole survivor of mini-Survivor. Ulong was a Survivor satellite to select the ninth player for the real Survivor over at Koror. And nobody deserves it more than Steph. She's been craving the merge for some time – now it's like a special present just for her.

Immediately, it's clear that the producers are just giddy. Stephenie is the winningest member of the losingest team in Survivor history. They've never had this situation before, and they refuse to let go of it before they have a chance to really enjoy it. The show begins to seem like a documentary: following Stephenie everywhere, dubbing in her voiceover. It's really quite poignant – she feels like she's been through so much, yet it's only halfway through – and it builds to the genuinely touching moment when she reads the note telling her that she's finally got her merge.

After her exhaustive solo trip across the sea ("Wilson!!"), the best part of Steph's arrival at Koror is that they're all lying around when she gets there. She walks up to this shelter, which they won in a reward challenge and basically looks like Tara compared to the dank rock she's been living under, and they're just lounging about without a care in the world. At first, she was excited to join them – now she's got to be excited to stomp their lazy asses into the ground. In short order, the producers rectify this by throwing a giant banquet to bond Stephenie to the Koror Way in which everything is provided to you before you can even ask for it. Two giant Palauan guys show up to teach everyone how to fish. If you're looking for fishing instructors, you could do a lot worse than fat guys in loincloths. Clearly, these guys don't go hungry. Coby, of course, reacts by pitching a fit. He's been doing that a lot lately.

I've talked before about how you have the workhorse-martyrs and the zen-lazies who do battle all the time on Survivor teams. Coby is the rare case of both: he doesn't do that much, and he's ticked that he doesn't get more credit for it. He's also miffed that he wasn't invited along when the better Koror sub-alliance was teaming up. (Hm... that betrayed feeling? Might be somewhat like how Angie felt when it came time to pick sides on day one.) Paul Graham talks a lot about how smart, capable people find other smart capable people sort of by instinct. I think this happened with Tom and Ian at Koror. And I think Coby would accept this rationale, too, except that somehow Katie fell in with them. Coby's smarter and more capable than Katie. (Hell, most cave lichens are smarter and more capable than Katie. Who isn't? I'd pick Terri Schiavo for my Survivor team over Katie – and yes, I mean the cremated Terri.) So, yes, at times he has a legitimate axe to grind. But there comes a point at which his sulking is just counterproductive and self-perpetuating. (You can't really gripe about people being two-faced on Survivor. "They act all nice, but they're really playing a game!" he says. Yes, but hiding the game is part of playing the game.) In general, I like Coby. He was delightful calling that slide puzzle as though he were officiating a junior miss pageant. But he needs to chill out.

Of course, if you're trying to get a gay guy to chill out, the last thing you want to do is put him up on a stage. Too late, it's the brutal endurance immunity challenge where everyone stands on a perch in the water. The water-perches of nudity! Hurrah! Except not. Dammit, the one time they run this challenge and the cuties start flashing the good stuff is one of the Survivor seasons I don't watch. Figures. (However, on a related topic, we've learned this much in the last few weeks of Survivor: starvation is not the friend of the boob job. While Stephenie's lost a little rackage as her body turns to its natural fat stores for nutrition, Jenn has transformed from perfectly attractive into some disproportioned Pamela Anderson parody of the female figure. Yuck. No wonder she's reportedly so jealous of Steph.) No, instead of a peep show we get a non-sequitur monologue from Coby about more of the game's inner workings. It appears that he's concluded that he doesn't stand a chance at gaining a decent position in the game on his own – his only shot is to topple the existing power structure in the hopes that while people are scrambling to reassemble new alliances, he can make a play for the top. It's a viable strategy – worked for Johnny Fairplay for a number of weeks – but it's largely dependent on immunity, something he willingly trades for a couple of doughnuts moments later. Maybe he's recalling Hatch, throwing himself on the mercy of the immune as a display of power. But the thing is, Hatch had power. You, sir, are no Richard Hatch. You need that immunity to survive another day or two until some new drama comes up and you can deflect people's attention to that.

Sure enough, Coby manages to go home when he otherwise wouldn't have been next to go. (It's kind of weird – this week, voting takes four times longer than it used to.) Janu is shocked – nearly indignant – when she learns it's not her. He really seems to revel in it, too. So, what was his angle? Did he really want to "go out on top" – leaving now, when he could assure himself that it was as a result of his threat to the power structure, rather than later when it might have been a result of his weakness or laziness? Seems odd. But he was really excited to finally be on a team. Maybe the each-man-for-himself half of the game just doesn't interest him – he gets enough of that in the rough-and-tumble world of hairdressing – so he decided to go out with a bang.

I'm proud of Tom, though, for sticking it out and winning immunity even though he doesn't need it. I could easily see him winning the rest of the immunity challenges. I don't think trading immunity for pizza was a bad choice for Stephenie, though. She still needs nutrition pretty badly, and based on all the people fighting over her at Koror, she's reasonably safe in assuming she's not tonight's target. Koror's been waiting to clear out some of the dead wood. Janu, Coby, or even Caryn would be more likely to go first.

At this point, I don't see how Stephenie can lose the million dollars. She dominated before the merge, she's survived the merge itself and into an even-numbered team which will buy her a few days to settle in fully. (Big coups never happen with even numbers, because it's easier to force the much-feared tie. Now that Steph is one of eight, she has a few extra days to cement herself into a good alliance or two to help her ride out the next few TribCons when the larger number of voters makes it harder to control.) Bobby Jon said it best: she's absolutely "the top player in the game." I think she can survive the period where Koror's voters fear her because of her strong performance at Ulong. The only thing that might pose a threat is that she doesn't have any experience playing voting politics with a group as strong as Koror. At Ulong, she barely had to try, but this is a more intense game. (Fortunately, the shift to the individual game is new to Koror, too, so she should be okay.) There's certainly nobody I want to win more than her. I like Tom a lot, but Stephenie deserves this like no one ever has. (And, once again, behold the power of bouncy ringlets!)

The column based on the 3/23 episode (with the "millions" of jellyfish) would have carried the title And He Shall Be My Squishy – that's pretty much the only thing I regret missing over the last three weeks of unchronicled Survivor.

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