Up For Grabs

16May07

While everyone here in the Philippines were choosing who the next batch of institutional thieves will get to steal more of their money for the next three years, half the world away a smaller group of people were voting the next person who will get more or less the same thing - that is, a huge pile of cash.

I don’t think I need to tell anyone which was the more entertaining, compelling, unpredictable, and most importantly, the least depressing of these two events.

This latest season of Survivor started off having to fit in a pretty big pair of shoes, Survivor Cook Islands, despite the overrated racism controversy, was one of the best seasons of Survivor ever produced. It had villains who were real villains, heroes who were real heroes, and twists up the wazoo.

Admittedly, I’m a bit biased. After all, it’s not everyday an Asian(Yul Kwon) gets to be in the spotlight for winning one of the better reality shows out there.

I have to say though, that Survivor Fiji, although not exactly topping Survivor Cook Islands in the list of great television series, was a pretty enjoyable one either way.

There were problems, however. In paper, the premise of Survivor Fiji of splitting the teams into “haves” and “have-nots” seemed to be a pretty intriguing twist to the game. In reality, it wasn’t. Week after week of the first few episodes of this season were depressing. Watching the “have-nots” try to literally survive in the game while the “haves” were living in the lap of luxury (with composting toilets!) was sometimes too much to take. When the “have-nots” were losing challenge after challenge after challenge, it really begs the question why the producers didn’t expect a tribe that’s hungry, thirsty, and cold would be easy pickings for a tribe that’s healthy, happy, and comfortable.

Things only became really interesting after the producers finally realized how bad it was getting and allowed new tribes to be formed. Part of this is because the new “have-nots” were no longer as sympathetic as before, since they were entirely made up of the jocks, with the exception of one emo nerd who they (predictably) treated as their slave, who was subsequently replaced by a much much manlier woman along the lines of Trucker Susan from the first season of Survivor.

Yes, they were all a bunch of jerks. Mookie was the exception though. He was more of an idiot sheep instead of a real jerk. Alex, on the other hand, would be the most entitled person you will ever see playing the game.

After kicking the manly woman out (apparently she wasn’t man enough for them), the “Four Horsemen”, as Alex, Edgardo, Mookie and Dreamz would proudly call themselves, turned out to be a pretty short-lived alliance, as the inevitable merging of the contestants led to one of the best moments in survivor history - the double-cross of Dreamz.

You really had to watch it to truly appreciate what happened, but the gist of it was, Dreamz, the homeless cheerleading coach, betrayed the “Four Horsemen” by providing vital information about their strategy to the other alliance which he seemed to be joining, THEN betrayed that other alliance (composed of the core of Earl, Yau-man, and Cassandra) to the “Four Horsemen” by again, providing vital information about their strategy to the other alliance which he seemed to be staying loyal to. Finally, as his last act as one of the “Horsemen”, Dreamz reveals the most critical part of their strategy against Yau-man and the gang, that they have one of the hidden immunity idols.

They got picked off one by one after that.

What’s funny is you really can’t feel sorry for them since they were, as I mentioned, a bunch of jerks. The dismissal of Alex even elicited a smile in my face, since he was the biggest asshole so far in the game, only to be topped by the aforementioned, Dreamz.

Now Dreamz, at the end of Survivor, ended up being one of the biggest villains in the game, having cheated by far one of the best players of Survivor in the last fourteen seasons - Yau-man.

The funny thing about Yau-man was that nobody ever saw him as a real contender in the game. He was a short, thin, Malaysian-Chinese who recently emigrated to the US, making him appear to be a) not really all that good with the challenges, especially the physical ones, and b) very easy to alienate, as he’s not really American-ized all that much.

It was surprising then, that he ended up being a critical part in a lot of the team challenges, not to mention winning quite a few individual challenges. What’s fascinating is that he won all those challenges, even the physical ones, using SCIENCE! The best moment by far was in a wrestling challenge where he was able to defeat his opponent almost twice his size by using her own size against her.

Yau-man made all the right moves, made all the right alliances, so much so that he never had to really lie to anyone in the game, much less betray them. For a moment there, it really seemed as if the little Chinese man was actually going to win the million dollars.

Unfortunately, his last decision cost him the win, when he made a deal with Dreamz for the final four immunity idol in exchange for the car that he won in the last reward challenge. This more or less made his plans for victory contingent on one thing and one thing only - that Dreamz keep his word.

Which obviously didn’t happen.

Which lead to a final three composed of Earl, Cassandra and Dreamz, with Earl being the eventual winner with the first ever 9-0-0 result. Predictably too. Half the people in the jury’s composed of people completely screwed over by Dreamz, and Cassandra’s just the latest in a long line of female Survivor finalists (with Amber being the most famous one) who only got that far because they were riding the coattails of the real master manipulators in the game. There really was no way that Earl wasn’t going to win Survivor.

One thing that manly woman Lisi mentioned during the jury questioning piqued me though, how there is essentially no difference between what Dreamz did to Yau-man (reneging on their immunity idol deal) and what Earl did to Yau-man (voting him out for that tribal council).

My thinking is that in Survivor, you’re allowed at the most, one moral indiscretion during the game. This was after all, Survivor. A lot of past Survivor winners also had their respective lies and betrayals that they have had to live with, they still won. The difference between Earl and Dreamz is that Earl voting Yau-man out was the one and only real betrayal Earl made in the entire course of the game. Dreamz screwed almost everyone. Once asked about it, Earl owned up and admitted that he had to vote at Yau-man because there was no way he was going to win the million dollars over Yau-man. Dreamz tried to justify his own actions.

In the end, there seems to be a hierarchy in how juries vote for who gets the million. The person they’d least vote for is the Amber/coattail rider who doesn’t even deserve to be in the final 2 or 3, next is the villainous master manipulator (ala Rob) who only got in because he screwed everybody else over, followed by a tie between the manipulator with the cleanest hands (ala Yul Kwon) or the challenge dominator (ala Ozzy or Colby).

That being said, the worst possible strategy if you want to win Survivor is to ride the coattails. Nobody wants to award a million dollars who basically did nothing in the game. Corollary to this, the best possible strategy if you want to win Survivor is to get the coattail rider with you in the final 2 or 3.

It’s really too bad though. Yau-man and Earl should’ve ditched Cassandra and assured Dreamz that they would take him to the final three, that way who had the immunity idol didn’t really matter. For some reason though, they were afraid of getting Dreamz in the final three because of what Boo said - that Dreamz would get the sympathy vote. None of them ever realized that nobody in the jury really gave a damn about Dreamz’ real-life situation since he backstabbed almost everyone in the jury. There really was no way that Dreamz was going to win the million dollars. Even stranger was that Cassandra never really factored in as an option for Earl to vote against, but that assumes that his alliance with Yau-man was more important than the million dollars, which it obviously wasn’t.

Something I noticed about this season of Survivor compared to the previous season - Survivor Cook Islands had the eventual dominant ethnic group be the Asians, while the weakest ethnic group were the African-Americans, with Nathan being the only real black contender. This time around, the roles are reversed, with the eventual dominant ethnic group being the the African-Americans, and the weakest ethnic group being the Asians, with Yau-Man as being the only real Asian contender. It’s a nice piece of symmetry, with one important note attached to it. Nathan lost Survivor because of the Caucasians (a third party) screwing him over as well as his own tendency to side with the Caucasians (notably Parvati) over anyone else. Yau-man lost Survivor because the African-Americans screwed him over.

Lesson from this season of the Survivor? Never trust a man with a ‘Z’ in his name. Especially if that ‘Z’ is supposed to be an ‘S’. Especially if that name shouldn’t have lived past high school.

In any case, the last two seasons of Survivor were the most ethnically diverse seasons ever, and it made for some pretty compelling TV. I hope the next few seasons follow that same trend. I dream, however, that they producers not just get more ethnically diverse castaways, but more nationally diverse castaways. An international group of castaways would be the best improvement they could make with this series.

Regardless, I’ll be definitely watching the next season. It’s going to be in CHINA!

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