We made it to the end of this god-forsaken season. We are wounded, both physically and emotionally, and we mostly want it all to end. The night before the finale, CBS announced new procedures for dealing with all of this, but it is a little too late for this season’s cast and the crewmember who was also the subject of Dan’s unwanted and inappropriate touching. Dan offered a half-hearted “sorry if you were offended” not-apology, and while I am sure we will have plenty to say about all of this, first we must get through this finale (and...sigh...reunion show). Here we go!
Mary: I want to start by saying that I’m not particularly surprised by how this season ended up shaking out, but I am disappointed. The final episode saw the group voting out Janet (and Dean, in particular, vying for her exit), and then ending up with a final three of Tommy, Noura, and Dean, with Lauren making her exit after a thrilling fire challenge. Tommy ended up getting the most votes (Noura got NONE) and won the million dollars. But did he really win in our hearts? Not in mine. Let’s discuss.
Todd: Frankly, once Janet was gone, no one could win in my heart. My heart, as is so often the case for Survivor, was on the jury. But it stung more than usual this season because of the toxic environment that Dan Spilo created and which the Survivor producers helped to perpetuate. The storyline for the finale was all one big ruse so that Tommy’s blowout victory would “surprise” the audience, but for anyone who has been paying attention this season, it was no surprise. No surprise that Noura would get no votes, continuing Survivor’s disappointing trend of no women winning the game since Sarah Lacina won 5(!!) seasons ago. No surprise that Tommy, the teacher, won against Dean, the chill guy. No surprises at all, really.
To put another pin on our mental state: we just saw The Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars, and we had some fancy ice cream, but we are also mentally exhausted by this season as a whole. We have compiled a list of things to talk about, and we will try to do so in haphazard fashion. Mary, what did you make of Dean’s performance in the finale, especially around all of his…*sigh*...bling?
Mary: I truly hated that he called it bling, first of all. He seems like an overgrown frat boy, to be honest, and it’s not a good look. Somewhere during the first part of this episode, Dean began to fancy himself a mastermind and began feeling very cocky about being “in charge.”
Todd: It sucked.
Mary: He wasn’t wrong, though. He won immunity in the second to last challenge and had an idol nullifier. Even though Janet had an idol, there was no way that she could play it and be successful; Dean knew she had an idol (or pretty much knew) and knew she’d play it. So he used the nullifier and Janet went home. From there, Dean was trying to mastermind his way into the final three, and it worked. When he won a reward of a steak dinner, he picked Noura (who enjoyed a “vegetarian option” that I desperately wanted to see but never got to), who then began...I don’t really know how to put this...fantasizing about him? She called their reward a “date” and continuously talked about how Dean was cute. It all felt very weird, but Dean’s plan worked! Noura completely fell for it! This got Dean a little further in the game, I think, but because Noura’s brain works in mysterious ways she ended up pitting Dean against Lauren in a fire making challenge. Tommy somehow convinced Noura that he couldn’t make fire, and there was a whole separate bit of craftiness there.
Todd: There was a lot happening with Noura this episode. We got another montage of Noura talking a lot when she decided to tell the rest of the final 4 who she was picking to take to the end. She calls Lauren her #1, tells Dean he’s cute (basically), and then ultimately picks Tommy to take to the end, leaving Dean and Lauren to earn their spot. From what we have seen on the show it was pretty obvious that no one wanted to go to the end with Lauren, but it still sucked to see Lauren so upset about not being picked to go to the end with Noura
Mary: What broke my heart about this whole thing is that Lauren said she practiced making fire before coming on the show. Lauren’s said she’s a superfan, and when she found out she was actually going to play the game, she spent some time practicing her fire skills. Since coming on the island, though, other people (maybe mostly Janet!) had made fire, so she didn’t have to. Hearing how much Lauren loved the show made me sad that she wasn’t going to win. Her fire actually looked pretty decent, and I thought for a moment she might beat Dean, but of course she didn’t. It’s heartbreaking that there were so many great women and people of color on this season, and I just had to watch them get eliminated one by one.
I’m not counting Noura in all that because she’s her own thing. I don’t know how to classify Noura and even now that the season is over she’s an enigma to me, in the halls of Coach and Phillip Sheppard and Debbie.
Todd: Truly, she is, as her sister says, “Noura-mal.” This was one of the closer firemaking challenges we have seen in recent years, and I wondered if we might have a marathon session that lasts well into the night since both Dean and Lauren claimed to be new at making fire, but no, Dean took a head start and Lauren could never really catch up. It feels dumb for me to be saying this, since I have never made a fire, but it really seems like you have to shave off some magnesium first. Like, that seems pretty apparent to me, watching at home. But once again, I know nothing of firemaking or challenges.
At the end of the day, I was rooting for Lauren in this finale even though it seemed she had no shot of winning from the outset. As you said before, in a season led by strong women and important conversations around race and issues of sexism (even before all the Dan stuff), it is really sad to see Tommy win over Lauren, a player who is just as worthy and basically got hosed. You could argue that Tommy was able to make a better case to Noura to be brought to the end, but I am sure Lauren also made her case, it just didn’t make the cut because it wasn’t relevant.
Mary: I kept whittling down my expectations as the show went on. Once Janet got voted out, I thought, well maybe now Lauren will win. Once Lauren went after the fire challenge, my hopes were completely gone. Most of all, I really didn’t want Dean to win. I was so nervous about this prospect that I looked up who won on Twitter (we were a little behind in watching the finale). I couldn’t stand the suspense. Once I saw it was Tommy, I felt...fine. I guess.
Todd: I think that is the perfect response to Tommy’s win. During the final tribal, Jamal pointed out that Tommy was trying to win from the “goat” position and, although this is true of literally every person who has ever taken part in a Survivor final tribal, it is still an interesting thing to consider. Tommy didn’t really feel like a goat, because the person making that decision--Noura--doesn’t seem to have the same level of strategic thinking as others who have one the final immunity challenge before. What did you make of Jamal’s statement? Was Tommy truly a goat? Or just a guy who was able to convince Noura to take him to the final even though it was against her best interest?
Mary: I don’t think Tommy is a goat, not really. He was strategic the entire game. He made decisions. He was thinking about the game. Noura, on the other hand, is the ultimate goat. No one really thought she had the capability to win because Noura can talk herself into a hole like no one else. Personally, I think she talked herself to death during the final tribal. Absolutely no one was convinced by her defense of herself, and it showed.
I’m not sure that he was particularly clever in talking Noura into taking him with her, or that he even had to try that hard. Although I kind of hate to rag Noura like this, she essentially listened to whoever was paying her the most attention at the moment. And at that moment? It was Tommy.
Todd: That’s fair. I was surprised by how, relatively, well Noura did in the final tribal. She made an argument that her emotion was an integral part of her gameplay (not successfully, but she made it), and she certainly ended up looking better than Dean, who contradicted himself left and right and was made a fool of when Jamal admitted that the Legacy Advantage he had given him was fake.
Mary: Dean was high on his own power, I think. He won a challenge, he successfully played an advantage, he won the fire challenge. He was really feeling himself as some sort of mastermind and it showed. He wasn’t able to keep up the facade and began making mistakes in final tribal, much to my own glee.
Todd: Truly, I kept waiting for Dean to be hoisted by his own petard and though it did not happen the way I wanted it to (by him being voted out), it did happen when he did not win the $1 million, which is the closest we will get to a win in this universe.
Mary: Moving on from some of the on-the-island gameplay, it was great to see Rob and Sandra walking off into the sunset, happy they got to chill on an island and build a fantastic shelter and do some light mentoring before RETURNING FOR THE ALL WINNERS SEASON, but we’ll talk about that later, I’m sure. I really enjoyed the inclusion of them as mentors this season, and if Survivor has to have a gimmick every season, I’m happy this was the gimmick for this season.
Todd: Agreed! It was fun having them around, even if their presence didn’t really culminate in a big twist, as many people suspected it might. They just left one more little test (and a doozy of a test it was!) and rode off into the sunset to spend approximately 2 weeks with their families before coming back!
I was not surprised but a little taken aback at how much this episode ate into the reunion show. This has been happening more and more lately, and it felt like it was even more likely to happen this season, considering how much the producers probably didn’t want to address the Ele-Dan-t in the room. Still, I’ll be honest, the reunion has never been my favorite aspect of these finales, and we blew through the portion where Tommy was interviewed. We did, however, get to see Sia give out her yearly prizes. And luckily they went to 3 of our favs: Jamal (who got $15K), Elaine, and Janet (who each got $100K).
Mary: It is still buckwild to me that pop superstar Sia gives money to people on Survivor. Look, she just loves the show and wants to reward her favorite players. If I had a ton of money just lying around, I might do that, too! Good for her. I think the people she chose all really deserved it and clearly seemed very grateful for it. Applause for all of them! It was especially good to see something good come of the game for Janet, who spent so much of her time sticking up for other women on the show in the whole Dan scenario.
Unsurprisingly, the worst part of the reunion show, to me, was when Kellee had a one-on-one interview with Jeff, who asked her about how she was coping during and after the show in light of Dan’s “inappropriate touching.” In so many words he said that her experience was going to instigate real change on the show and that this sort of thing (hopefully) won’t happen again. That being said, it felt incredibly awkward. Kellee seemed very nervous and reluctant to talk, especially since she felt, as she explained, the weight of other people’s experiences as well as her own. I get what she’s saying--she shouldn’t have to be a mouthpiece for every person who has ever experienced sexual harassment.
At one point, when Kellee wasn’t talking as much as Jeff felt she should be during a one-on-one (because she was so nervous), he said, “You can feel free to vent at me,” but what could she have realistically said? No matter what she said during that interview, someone was going to find fault with it--whether it be people who want her to be a voice for everyone or people who think she’s a liar or making too big of a deal about something. There’s no winning for Kellee here, which is sadly the way it is a lot of the time when women get sexually harassed or assaulted. And where’s Dan in all this? He’s fine, I guess. He didn’t have to answer for anything on national television, but Kellee did, even though she’s the victim in this scenario. Truly, this is what left such a bad taste in my mouth after the finale, and I’m still thinking about it and getting riled up about it now. I don’t know what else to say about it other than it sucks. I guess Survivor really is a microcosm of American culture in that women are still blamed or held up as an example when they get assaulted. Women are punished more often than not for speaking up.
Todd: *Standing ovation* Preach! This was hard to watch, because Kellee seems like such a sweet and nice person, and it sucks that this happened to her and that her time on Survivor will mostly be defined by this. However, it also seems like she spearheaded the changes that Survivor and CBS are making so that people can feel safe and have easier access to an unbiased party that can make judgments about these kinds of issues. Does it suck that it took Survivor 40 seasons (because the next season had already filmed) to make these decisions, and that apparently no one thought this was a problem until the episodes aired? Yes! Y-E-S! In big bold letters. That is a sign of a culture and a corporation that is rotten to its core. And in that way, this season of Survivor really has shown a mirror back on American society, for good (very little good) or ill (very much ill).
Mary: I think the right thing to do would be for them to invite Kellee back some other season, some other time. So she gets the chance to really play and not have a target put on her for calling out sexual harassment.
Todd: Yup! I concur 1000%.
In slightly related news, Elizabeth was not at the reunion show, and also--she and Jack are dating! Which means that Jack was not there either, presumably to support her, which is nice. You go Jack!
Mary: While I can’t say why Elizabeth wasn’t at the reunion show, it’s awfully suspicious that she got caught using Dan’s harassment as a “strategy,” isn’t it? And then she didn’t want to show up? AGAIN, WHY IS NO ONE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS. I’m on one now. As Kanye said, don’t let me get in the zone. And now? I’m definitely in the zone.
Todd: Didn’t he also name-drop Austin Powers in a song? Anyway. As a fun aside, the winner of this season, Island of the Idols, was the only player in the finale to never visit the island.
Mary: You mentioned that you heard on the Survivor Know-It-Alls podcast that this was an “old school” win, in that Tommy didn’t use any advantages or win any immunity challenges in order to win the game. Do you want to say more about that?
Todd: The conventional wisdom over the last years has been that in order to win Survivor nowadays, one must be able to navigate the advantages and be able to find and play idols to make big moves and “build your résumé.” However, Tommy didn’t really do any of that. He knew about other people’s idols, like with Lauren and Janet, and even with Dean’s idol nullifier, but he was never in the position to use those advantages himself. Basically, the idea is that Tommy is “old school” in that he depended on his ability to use his social skills and alliances to help him get through the game. He said at one point that he never wanted to be a hard-liner for either “Vokai” or “Lairo,” and while he did ally himself with Dean once Dean saved him (a brilliant social strategy of...befriending someone on the bottom? I mean not a bad idea but not necessarily a stroke of genius, closer to a stroke of luck.), he mostly stuck to his original Vokai members like Janet and Lauren until they became inconvenient obstacles for him to take out on his way to the final 3. Overall, Tommy played a pretty lowkey game that ends up looking more impressive because the editors are here to tell us that Tommy is thinking strategically throughout. If Tommy had been booted at 6 or 7, I am not sure we would have gotten nearly as many Tommy confessionals as we did, and he would have been just another bland dude who got voted out on the way to an Elaine victory.
Mary: That’s absolutely true. We’ve spent a lot of time saying that the editing is different this season, but maybe it really isn’t. Maybe Tommy was the winner all along. OK, he definitely was. But you know what I mean.
Todd: I do. And while that makes the story of the season more legible, it is still a little dispiriting, on top of everything else that makes this season VERY dispiriting. So for now, let us bid adieu to Season 39, this island and these idols, and say hello to some new idols.
Mary, tell me, are you excited for Winners at War? An All-Stars of All-Stars Cast! Rob and Amber, together again! Fire tokens! The return of the Edge! A $2 million prize (which Jeff says is the biggest in reality TV show history)! What are your thoughts?
Mary: I am and I’m not. I do think that the huge prize is exciting (if not a little ridiculous) and that having so many people who’ve played before (and won!) could be very entertaining. However, I’m having to face the fact that I simply don’t know most of them, and that might hinder some of the extra enjoyment I’d get from watching the show. However, all of my past seasons that I’ve seen with returning players didn’t really necessitate watching those players’ original seasons, so. I don’t know. I think it’ll be fun, but mostly I’m sad about this season right now. This feels very much like what football fans say, about how to be a true fan you have to deal with your team having some really crappy seasons. This was kind of a crappy one in my book. For a multitude of reasons.
Todd: It really was. Certainly, the darkest season in Survivor history, and one that I hope is not repeated. Perhaps this is all the more startling because the season started off with such promise (outside of Dan’s gross hands touching people!), and it declined so rapidly in such a short amount of time. Once that happened, it couldn’t really recover. Here’s hoping that Survivor really will learn something from this season and become a better, more inclusive and safe environment for all its players in the coming years. And please, let a woman win soon!
That’s all this season for Survivor: Island of the Idols. Enjoy the off-season while you can. Survivor’s 40th season airs starting February 12, 2020! See you then!
