Survivor: Guatemala Finale Recap

(I missed a large part of the reunion special, so I wanted to wait to post this until I had an opportunity to see it. Since my, um, sources have failed me in getting a good copy, I'll have to go with what I've seen.)

Well, at least I got the voting totals right. They got me with the Rafe tease. I guess I should have listened to the rumors that Danni was going to win after all.

And what a win. Danni capitalized on a lot of people who were rather bitter about getting outplayed by Stephanie and coasted to victory. As much as I don't want to denigrate Danni here, she is competing with Amber, Sandra and Vescepia as the worst winners of Survivor. Her big selling point? She was in the smaller tribe post-merge and managed to survive. Thing is, she won a key immunity challenge, but beyond that she shut up and let Rafe and Steph do what they had to do to make the final three.

The show started off well, with the sacrificing of a chicken as a part of a Mayan ritual. This led to a couple of funny quotes/situations:

- Steph asking Rafe if the chicken is dead, with Rafe responding "Steph, they just tore the head off that chicken. I'm pretty sure it's dead."
- Steph getting Lydia to ask the Mayans if it was okay to eat the sacrificed chicken, followed by a stern "No."
- Steph, Lydia and Danni eating the chicken anyway.
- After the chicken was eaten, the hardest rain of the series strikes, and the monkeys start to go crazy. I don't want to accuse Mark Burnett of anything, but how exactly does one person get the weather and nature to do what he wants it to do.

The sketch of Judd that they used for the "remember previous competitors" segment was gold. It captured his personality incredibly well.

And the immunity challenges? They were great as well. The final four challenge was an impressive visual, and you had a sense that it would be easy to get lost in the giant maze. Again, Rafe showed that he is a step ahead of everybody by looking for the markers at the top of the pyramid thingy where the challenge ended. And I think Lydia actually did something kinda smart along the way, as she just followed Steph, meaning that she wouldn't be too far behind when it came to the end and trying to solve the puzzle.

In the end, Rafe won, and Lydia went. I'm absolutely shocked that she used the "I'm not a threat" line in front of the jury. That was the final blow to her chances of winning the million. Having the jury think that in the back of their minds is one thing, but if she made it to the final 2 there was a chance that the jury could be convinced that she was a sneaky threat. Admitting that she wasn't a threat guaranteed her 2nd place at best.

Speaking of 2nd place at best, Steph seemed to realize that she stood very little chance of winning against Rafe or Danni, but still she didn't attempt to run the gambit of tying the vote. I don't know if it was confirmed what the method of breaking the tie would be - Purple Rock of Doom or a challenge of some sort - and Steph did claim to be attempting to save herself so I guess that's a fair move.

(BTW, should anybody at Burnett Productions stumble over this entry, would it be possible to make the rules to the game available at the beginning of each season? It'd be nice to know things like how ties would be broken, even if the situation never arises during the actual show.)

The final endurance challenge was well designed also. Starting it with an easy method to balance on a swing (while standing on said swing), then making it harder was interesting. Watching Rafe (ultimately) throw away $1 million by making a dumb error a la Rudy in the first Survivor was fun. And then watching Steph inevitably lose her grip and make her descent down the pole until she was out was heart wrenching. Good thing Rafe was there draw our attention to him. He sealed his third place spot by "releasing" Danni from any promise she had made to him previously. This brings us the first list of this post:

Top 5 Stupid Moves Ever in Survivor History:


5. Survivor 5 (Thailand): Shook Jai (led by Shii-Ann) conspires to throw an immunity challenge so they can vote out Jed, even though they have an advantage over Chauy Gahn. The 5 Chauy Gahn members that survive to the merge end up being the final 5.

They had Chauy Gahn on the ropes, with Chauy Gahn having lost the first two immunity challenges and in a lot of disarray. Instead of just continuing with the destrucion of Chauy Gahn, they got cute and cocky, thinking they could beat Chauy Gahn any time they wanted. As it turns out, they were really, really wrong.


4. Survivor 11 (Guatemala): Rafe throws away a guaranteed final 2 spot by "releasing" Danni from her promise.

Sure, it was an honourable thing to do, but really, Rafe knifed Judd in the back, kinda did the same to Jamie and gave Cindy the boot because she decided to keep a car to herself instead of giving everybody else one. The bout of "honour" is a bit questionable.


3. Survivor 2 (Australia): Colby throws away a guaranteed victory by bringing Tina to the final 2 ahead of Keith,

This isn't number one because it was an honourable move, and as best as I can tell he knew that it could cost him the win. So I'll give him a bit of credit for that. It was a dumb decision though.


2. Survivor 4 (Marqueasas): John, Rob D, Tammy and Zoe reveal their final four alliance in a reward challenge, then get Pagonged.


The reward challenge was the traditional trivia game where everybody has three strikes, and if you get a question right, you get to give someone a strike. John, Rob D, Tammy and Zoe chose to eliminate people from the reward challenge IN THE ORDER THEY WERE GOING TO VOTE THEM OUT! Ignoring the effect this would have on the eliminated people's final 2 vote, they did this with 9 people left. Meaning the 5 left saw a pattern. This gave Sean and Vescepia and opening to convince Kathy, Neleh and Paschal to start voting out the evil 4.

(Sure, John would get his revenge on Neleh by refusing to vote for her since she wouldn't admit to being deceitful or something. But he could have been winning the game if he had just thought ahead.)


1. Survivor 3 (Africa): Brandon decides to vote with Lex to eliminate Kelly, thus alienating his tribe.

I swear this has nothing to do with my opinion of Kelly. But this is kinda the same situation as the Thailand decision, only much, much worse. (At least Shook Jai had a chance to make their decision to work.) Brandon had two options: (1) Vote with his tribemates and Kelly to eliminate Kelly, setting his tribe up to run the table and be the final or (2) Vote with Lex to get rid of Kelly, and set him up to get voted out at the next tribal council. (1) is the easiest solution, and a guaranteed outcome. (2) is very difficult to pull off, and has no guarantee of working (what happens if Lex wins immunity?) Brandon, trying to prove himself to be the greatest player of Survivor ever or something, decided on (2). And to make matters worse, he FORGOT TO TELL HIS TRIBE WHAT HE WAS DOING!

So now his own tribe thinks that he is a traitor, and the other tribe is trying to get back their edge in numbers. Hmmm, I wonder what could happen next? Of course Brandon gets voted out. If he had just played it straight, we could be talking about Brandon as the Survivor: Africa winner. Instead, we refer to him and Kelly as the Survivors who wanted to be on the Amazing Race before Rob and Amber ever met. And for that, Brandon gets the top spot in stupid moves.



Moving back to the Finale at hand, of course Danni decided to bring Steph and get the guaranteed $1 Million. And then things went downhill. The jury segment was pretty boring. Danni and Steph both hit the main points they needed to in order to get votes. Judd attempted to be Sue Hawk, but failed miserably, coming across with the bitterness but not the sheer vitrol that Hawk had. And then everybody voted against somebody, instead of voting for somebody. Which left us with Danni being one of the worst winners ever, and Jeff Probst saying that Danni had made all the right moves at the right time and now she is a million dollars richer. ARGH!

Finishing it up, here's one final list. A list of the winners, in order of most deserving to least:

1.  Tom      (Survivor 10)
2.  Brian    (Survivor 5)
3.  Rich     (Survivor 1)
4.  Tina     (Survivor 2)
5.  Chris    (Survivor 8)
6.  Jenna    (Survivor 6)
7.  Ethan    (Survivor 3)
8.  Sandra   (Survivor 7)
9.  Amber    (Survivor 8 - All-Stars)
10. Danni    (Survivor 11)
11. Vescepia (Survivor 4)