Mon, December 12, 2005

Coming into the Guatemala final four, I have mixed emotions. I'm horrified – horrified! – to see Lydia still in the mix, but I'm pleased that her contribution (a warm body that can hold a Sharpie) has allowed the others to play some strategy. I'm not thrilled with the final four, but I'm happier than I might have been, considering the final eight. I think it was a wise move to get rid of Gary and Judd. I think it was a monumentally stupid move to get rid of Cindy. Mostly, I guess it's bittersweet because Stephenie is the only person left whom I'd really want to win, and I know she absolutely cannot. In fact, she's more likely to make it to the final two, because she's the only one who definitely loses in that situation. (As much as Lydia should be a goner in a final two vote, we've seen people skate by before.)

I have really been warming to Cindy over the last few weeks, because I like how she plays the game. She's aware of the temptation to give in to short-term concerns like emotion or which contestant she likes better, but she always remains committed to strategy. This is how I'd play the game, and I like to see it – especially in someone who's nice, friendly, and attractive. (Since I definitely wouldn't be bringing those attributes to the game!)

As sad as I was to see her go, I have to grant that it makes some strategic sense to target her. I wanted her to win, and I could see it happening, so she definitely represented a threat. (Rafe or Danni represent greater threats, in my view, but Cindy's up there.) What frustrates me the most about Cindy's ouster is the motivation behind it. (I should say "alleged" motivation, because we're all at the mercy of the Survivor editors; I look at the evidence presented by the editors because, as slanted and misleading as it is, it's all any of us has to go on.) The vote focuses on Cindy because she doesn't forgo the car she wins at the reward challenge and give cars to Rafe, Lydia, Danni, and Steph instead. A sizable controversy erupts over whether she made the right decision to keep her car, and Rafe uses this to justify breaking his alliance with Cindy and turning his vote and Danni's against her. This is preposterous, and Rafe makes the choice purely from an emotional standpoint: he wanted a car, and he feels slighted. Strategically, the argument can be made for or against Cindy's decision. On the one hand, maybe if she gives away cars it would lock up the votes of three jury members – but as Cindy says, it certainly wouldn't guarantee their vote. I happen to agree with her. (Plus, I'd cut my own hand off to spite Probst in the face of one of his dippy "Survivor superstitions." And who's to say the "car curse" isn't about who wins the reward challenge, not who accepts the car?) Stephenie and Lydia seem to agree, too. They'd love to get cars, but Cindy won hers fair and square, and she has a right to keep it. Rafe's argument centers on wastefulness (aside from the fact that he feels slighted – he'd have forgone his car if he'd won the reward and can't conceive of anyone making the opposite choice): there were five cars to be given away and Cindy gave away one of them instead of four, which is a poor distribution of value. (Turns out CBS is giving the other four away anyway, in a viewer sweepstakes.) But Cindy won the car and it should be her choice – and God damn it I'm sick of these political games tacked onto the end of every single challenge! Will you swap? Will you forfeit? Who will you pick to go with you? Fuck it – just win the challenge and accept the prize.

But that isn't all. Even once Rafe and Danni get whipped into a frenzy over the cars (and this is just their rationale for banding together against the rest, which they were starting to do anyway), Stephenie and Lydia could still have voted with Cindy for Danni or Rafe and they would have had a majority. And it makes sense, too! As Steph said, she can't afford to betray Cindy after she's already betrayed Judd and Jamie who are also on the jury. (Not that this nail in the coffin helps any, but I still say Steph has no chance at the final two. Even those who don't feel betrayed by her feel there's an inherent unfairness in the Survivor "do over" that she and Bobby Jon enjoyed.) And this is literally the last chance they'll have to topple Rafe from power. Is it possible Stephenie just doesn't know Rafe is controlling the game at this point? Could she have missed his new alliance with Danni, which indicates quite clearly that he's making plans to turn his back on her? If so, this is very bad news for her. The only final two she has a tiny chance at winning is one against Rafe, and only if she impresses upon the jury early and often that he was the real mastermind behind everything – especially their ousters. I'd prefer to see Steph make a play here, rather than capitulating to Rafe's plans and staying quiet.

Nevertheless, the finale begins; in just two short hours, Probst and his helicopter of destiny will descend from the heavens, crown a winner, and end the madness.

***

And we're back! A win for Danni, which is predictable considering she made the smart choice (some would say, the only choice) of taking Stephenie to the final two with her. Let's take a look at how everyone played the endgame, the challenges, and the last two TribCons.

Lydia

From the start of the final episode all the way through the Q&A of the final Tribal Council, Lydia championed her loyalty and remained stumped on the question: "Why am I here?" She never had any more to offer than just an empty vote, on call whenever the dominant alliance needed it. She outlived her usefulness in the game, and even after that point, demanded more from everyone. (With one exception: in the final four TribCon, she insisted she posed no threat and had no value.) Getting rid of her was tempting for the last three or four votes, but when it came down to the final four, Rafe definitely made a bad call eliminating her and keeping Danni around. Anyone against Steph in the final two would have won, and having Lydia in the final three would've virtually guaranteed him that final two. Just one of many opportunities blown by his "moral game" in the final moments.

Rafe

Rafe got way too keyed up about the moral component of the game, right at the wrong time. As Stephenie was fond of mentioning, he played the same game as her, cutting people he had allied with (except he managed to make her seem like the villain; a major distinction). But at the end, he focused on feeling righteous in all his decisions, and that's the difference between winning and losing Survivor. You can make a distinction between being truly evil and just telling a few white lies – but if you try to play the entire game completely pure, you will not win.

But he's also a shallow, hypocritical, sanctimonious asshole. Because as part of his "moral game," he insisted that Danni disregard her promise to take him to the final two – and when she followed his instructions and gave him the boot, he acted betrayed and pledged his vote to Stephenie. (As far as I can tell, the only one she got.) I also loved how deeply he was moved by the chicken sacrifice ritual. (Well, he was just as moved by everything, really.) He felt it gave him such a connection with the Maya people and the Guatemalan landscape – so much that he told Probst at TribCon that until that experience, the game in Guatemala was essentially meaningless. Right in front of a jury full of people who did everything else in Guatemala except have that experience. Nice.

His endgame came down to three critical mistakes: not eliminating Danni (which would have guaranteed him a final two with Steph – read: a million dollars); touching the pole with his hand during the last immunity challenge (after prevailing at so many other concentration games); and releasing Danni from her pact to take him to the final two (which, by the way, elicited a TribCon reaction that goes into the Jury Eye Roll Hall of Fame). Deciding differently at any one of those points would have put him in the final two.

Stephenie

After yet another heart-wrenching defeat in the final immunity challenge, Steph interviewed that she "played the best game I know how to play." I believe she honestly did, and that's what disappoints me. As we saw in Palau, she just doesn't have the wherewithal to create a win for herself. Her fatal slide down the pole in the final immunity challenge was a perfect illustration of exactly how she plays Survivor – every ounce of strength, heart, and determination she has to give, but she just doesn't have enough.

She played a strong game this time around, and that – and a few strokes of luck – carried her to the final two, which was arguably as far as she could expect to go unless she went with someone like Judd, since nobody wanted to hand the million to a repeater. But she got played by Rafe, and her near-unanimous defeat in the final Tribal Council is a direct result. (She probably still would've lost, but not by such a landslide.) Towards the end, her talking point was that she and Rafe had played the same game, but it wasn't true at all. They'd betrayed the same people, but he played a game where Steph was the culprit for all of those votes, even when she really wasn't in some cases. Steph played a game where she voted the way she felt she had to at every turn, but never focused on the strategy of jury management – which is basically a public relations game. Critical difference. She could've shared her blame with Rafe at any number of points, but never knew to do it until the end when it was too late.

I don't know how soon she knew she was coming back to Survivor, but if it was in time to watch Survivor: Palau in preparation, she really should have brushed up on her PR. She was shaken a couple of times during the final TribCon Q&A, which shouldn't happen. Particularly with Judd, who made it clear she wouldn't get his vote. I understand her impulse to defend herself, but with someone like that, you just want to apologize as sincerely as you can for the benefit of the rest of the jury and then get him to stop talking as quickly as possible.

Danni

There were times when I would've wanted to credit her with playing the "stealth game" she insists she played, but I think for the most part she got lucky and coasted, until the final six when her back was against the wall and she started working with Rafe to save her skin. Up to that point, she was never in any danger because the hot chick is the last person voted off when one alliance has the numbers over another one. From that point on, she played well and she was fortunate that Rafe started thinking about backup strategy right when she needed him. But I can't take everything away from her – she still played a smart game, making moves when she needed to, and hanging back when she didn't. That's a key instinct to have, because you can expend a lot less energy and political capital by only acting when you absolutely must. She did as well at this as anyone I can remember. (If she'd achieved a truly zen level, she'd have feasted with Steph, Jamie, Rafe, and Lydia during that first post-merge immunity challenge; but that's asking a lot, I know.)

I'm glad she won, because she's the only person in the final four that I liked as much as Stephenie – and Steph a) could never possibly have won, and b) really broke my heart when she came up short on strategy and endurance at the end. Danni really performed on that final endurance immunity challenge, playing smart as well as strong, which I really respect. Still, it's hard to root for someone who plays such a low intensity game, because her visibility was so low for most of the show and you didn't get as much chance to bond with her. (Hot though her challenge bottoms may be.)

One thing bugged me, though – and she shares the blame for this with Lydia and Stephenie, but Danni's the only one I remember specifically mentioning that she is a "very religious person." The Maya natives came to perform a sacred ritual for the final four contestants, sacrificing a chicken as part of a ritual to honor the Maya gods. Later, she and Steph and Lydia decided to desecrate the sacrifice and eat the chicken that was placed in the fire. (Rafe abstained, because by this point his "moral game" has expanded to include the metaphysical sphere.) What bothers me is this: someone more clever than me recently characterized a religious person as being separated from an atheist by only one degree. Someone like Danni believes exactly the same as me, if you're referring to the Maya gods, or Allah, or Buddha – those gods don't exist and the folks who think they do are silly. She and I only differ over the existence of her God. Which seems like a narrow minded view, because she's someone who acknowledges that you accept the existence of God on faith and that faith cannot be challenged. But she'll happily challenge someone else's faith: oh, those silly Maya, believing that a ring of sugar and a pile of honey and a flaming bird would make their gods happy. Don't they know you're supposed to eat a piece of cookie and drink from the same wine glass as everyone else in the building?

I guess my point is, it's one thing to look at the Judeo-Christian God and say, "Well, I choose to honor him in a different way than other denominations," but here there's a distinction between "my God" and "your God" and it's just, "Your God's wrong. I'm eating his chicken now." I'm not saying I wouldn't have eaten the chicken – but I'm an atheist, so I'd be disrespecting their faith but just not being a hypocrite about it.

I probably wouldn't have been irked by this if that had been the end of it, but then a huge storm descended on the camp and it was attributed to angering the Maya gods by eating their dead bird. At first, this was sort of joking (disrespecting the disrespect of the Maya gods, if you will), but by TribCon, it had become a serious thing for Lydia. She was convinced that they'd angered the Maya gods, and that's when I really threw my hands up. The idea that gods have jurisdictions – "We left our God back in the good ol' U.S. of A., but down here the Maya gods are in charge, and we pissed them off. I don't blame the Maya gods back home, when I forget to set the parking brake and roll over the cat in the driveway. Up there, the Maya gods don't have clearance for our airspace. But down here they're in charge, and if you eat their bird, they unleash a punishing storm just like our American God sends Katrina and Andrew to punish those silly fags."

I'm probably just oversensitive these days when it comes to reality show contestants and God, because the petty, awful Weaver family has been upholding a fine Amazing Race tradition of invoking Jesus' name for everything from parking spaces to the actions of other teams. God is in the tub, people.

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