Survivor: Tocantins, finale

Well, a long and poorly-editied season has come to a close.

The first immunity challenge was no surprise. When you’ve got one athletic person left in the game and you ask everyone to please clambor through a series of rope tunnels, the conclusion is probably as foregone as you can get. I wonder if Erinn’s almost-victory was nearly as close as she claimed. J.T. put the necklace back on and laughed all the way back to camp.

I’m not sure how surprised I was to see Stephen and J.T. vote Taj out before Erinn. There was a lot of talk about how loved Taj was by everyone, and how much all of the former Timbira tribe really disliked Erinn, and how much easier it would be to win against Erinn than Taj. So bringing Erinn to the final three seemed like the only logical choice for the guys who had been playing strong all season. We’ll come back to this.

I thought the final immunity challenge was really clever: you had a large metal contraption through which you would roll a series of balls. The ball would flip a switch at about the halfway point and then roll down towards the bottom and onto the ground. You have to catch the ball as it comes out the bottom and put it back in the top, where the flipped switch would cause it to roll along a different path next time. After you’ve added a couple balls you’re frantically catching the balls coming out alternating sides and feeding them back into the machine, trying not to let any of them touch ground.

Maybe I’m just nostalgic, but I really miss the “stand there as long as you can” challenges they used to have for final immunity. They must have decided to stop doing those after one went on for twelve hours all through the night, but damned if it didn’t make for fine television. I’m glad, though, that final immunity was decided by a challenge that every contestant had a fighting shot at. Sure, J.T. won again, but I never felt like he was going to win; Stephen just happened to flub a ball before J.T. did.  So there it is: J.T. goes back with immunity again, and now has to pick someone to sit next to him in the finals.

Going into the episode I was certain the final two would be J.T. and Stephen. As awesome as these guys have played the game I really thought they bought into the loyalty’n’friendship pap they had been spouting all season. But then they voted out Taj and took Erinn to the final three! At this point I was certain a J.T./Stephen finale was impossible because, well, why bring Erinn to final three if you’re not planning to bring her to final two? It doesn’t make any sense.

So here’s what happened: J.T. went to tribal council and voted out Erinn. He decided to take Stephen, his best friend and closest ally, to the finals.

For the record, I don’t think it could have been Stephen’s sales pitch in that last day leading up to J.T.’s decision. The “you should honor your friendship and loyalty” stuff would have sounded natural coming from anyone else, I guess, but not only had J.T. seen how Stephen played the game, he played the entire game with him, and not a day earlier helped vote out their closest ally, Taj. I don’t fault Stephen for playing the friendship card. It’s the only card he had in his deck. He couldn’t beat Erinn’s offer of “dude, the whole jury hates me, take the million and walk”. I don’t even particularly believe J.T. bought it.

Going up agains the jury, though, made everything clear. I’ve seen best friends go against the jury as a unified front. I’ve seen close allies trip over themselves to see who can be weepier and more apologetic. And I’ve seen mortal enemies do everything in their power to tear each other down. This is the first time I’ve seen a close alliance keep it together for 39 days and then fall out right there in front of the jury. It was majestic.

It’s not really worth breaking down what all the jurors asked. Coach gave a lecture, Debbie and Taj attacked their lies and slander as though they hadn’t endulged in those things themselves, Tyson… actually I’m not even sure what Tyson said. It doesn’t matter. The star of the show was J.T. The slight jabs at Stephen’s game, after 39 days of nothing but putting Stephen on a pedistal and talking him up like a champion, were very carefully orchestrated to get Stephen flustered. Each little pinprick was delivered with J.T.’s patented Southern twang and simple boyish charm. It was obvious the jury was eating it up.

It was obvious to Stephen, especially. By the time Stephen started returning fire, it was too late. He admitted to the jury that he probably would have taken Erinn to the finals, and after that his slings and arrows were perfectly deflected off of J.T.’s armor of loss and disappointment. The way J.T. played up his role as betrayed friend and ally was a sight to behold. He had the jury eating out of his hand and Stephen was painted as a baby-eating demon.

And then he won, 7-0. A blow-out the likes we haven’t seen since Mr. Awesome Nice Guy went up against Evil Backstabber Guy and Who Is This Chick? back in Fiji.

J.T. is certainly a deserving winner. He was undoubtedly a strong competitor and played the social aspect of the game really well, but the sheer depths of deception he was willing to go to in order to win — to throw your closest ally under a bus and make him feel bad about it — was a masterstroke. And he did it all that sleepy smile of his. Well played, dude.

I tend to find the reunion shows to be a little boring. I watch them, but nothing new happens and talking about old events generally isn’t worth commenting on. I will note, though, that Coach grabbed the spotlight for way too long and Probst just let him have it. Why was this guy made the star of the season? I understand he was one of the more interesting characters but when you focus on the player who comes in fifth to the exclusion of everyone else you are doing the game and the show a disservice. Not that I was expecting anything different; they’d been doing this disservice all season long. If season 24 is another All-Stars, I really hope they leave Coach out of it. Or at least pair him up with Fairplay so the two egos can destroy each other in a fiery ball of doom.

That wraps up this season of Survivor. We’re going to Samoa in the fall with 18 new players, which probably means it’s not going to be another twist-less season. Ah well. I’ll be here to cover it in weekly updates, much to the chagrin of my readers.