2011年12月21日星期三

"Survivor South Pacific" Finale Recap And Final Thoughts

After 39 days of close challenges, blindsides, dumb moves, and a whole lot of Bible-thumping, we finally have our winner for "Survivor: South Pacific."  We have two hours of events to talk about so let's get right into it.

We start with Brandon arriving at Redemption Island and explaining his dumb move in the last episode.  Ozzy notes that Brandon wasn't playing a game built around loyalty, but rather around blind faith, and that blind faith was not in God but in people that wanted to win a million dollars way more than he did. 

Over at Te Tuna, the remaining Upolus try to gather themselves after a very turbulent Tribal Council, and Albert angers Coach when he says he had no idea that Brandon was going home.  This, of course, is not true, since Coach and Albert had discussed who they were going to vote out at that Tribal Council and Coach had told Albert in no uncertain terms that he was targeting Brandon no matter what.  Coach then goes off on a rant about how he is sick of people "being holier-than-thou" and not owning up to their deception, and he yells at Albert for not being straight with him.  The entire discussion can be summed up like this:

The next day, Ozzy and Brandon receive tree mail telling them that they are about to compete in the final Redemption Duel.  They head over to the arena where Jeff Probst explains that the challenge is a simple endurance test: cling onto a pole for as long as you can.  They will start at the top of the pole, and there are several notches along the pole for them to slide down onto in case they lose their footing.  Last person standing gets back in the game.  After 45 minutes, both players were struggling to hang on, but Brandon fell down first and became the seventh juror, while Ozzy returned to the game for a second time.

Brandon left the game saying he forgives the people that backstabbed him and will leave the game with his head held high.  After all the emotional turmoil he experienced in this game, I hope Brandon will be able to take this and become a better person, but let's face it: until he made that final dumb move, he made for horrible television.  Hopefully this will convince the casting team to stop being lazy and picking people based on nepotism.  I don't want another Hantz on this show, and neither do a lot of people.

With Ozzy back at the Te Tuna camp, Coach immediately sits down with him and reaffirms the final three deal he made with Ozzy on Redemption Island.  He tells Ozzy that if he wins the next immunity, he will give him his hidden immunity idol and keep him safe.  Ozzy nods his head through the whole discussion, but in an confessional he admits he does not buy anything Coach says.  Coach thinks it is his game to lose because everyone wants to take him to the final three.  Did it ever occur to him that the reason everyone is sticking with him is that, one, he has the idol and therefore no one dares to target him, and two, the jury probably doesn't like him because of his honor speeches?

Now it's time for the first of two immunity challenges.  In this challenge, the players must use their left arm to pull down on a pulley that will level out a balancing board.  Then, using their right hand, they must use wooden tiles to create a tower tall enough to pass a red marker.  They each have a limited number of tiles, and if they do not keep the pulley steady, the board will tilt and the tower will fall over.  First player to create a tower tall enough to reach the required height wins immunity.

The game starts, and Coach, Sophie, and Ozzy pull away from Albert and Rick.  Then, Coach's tower falls over while Ozzy and Sophie run out of tiles to use, forcing them to take apart some of their tower and find a new approach.  In the process of rebuilding, both Ozzy and Sophie lose some tiles as they fall to the ground and out of their reach.  Sophie asks Albert to drop his stack and help her by picking up her tiles.  Albert refuses and Sophie begins yelling at him until Probst reminds her that this is an individual challenge and no one is allowed to help each other.  "If you want Ozzy out of this game," he says, "Beat him."

Eventually, Sophie's tower falls again, leaving it race between Ozzy and Coach, and in a season filled with close, riveting challenges, this one was incredibly fun to watch.  You can see the sweat pouring down both of the vets' faces as they slowly place more tiles on their stacks.  After a long, tense struggle, Ozzy finishes his stack first, and with a victorious punch to destroy his stack, celebrates another challenge victory while the Upolus prepare to do some scrambling.

Back at camp, Coach and Albert discuss voting out Rick, since both of them feel that the jury would vote for him because they like him and his work ethic.  Ozzy, however, isn't going to let it be that easy, and he plans to sow seeds of discontent amongst his competitors.  He proposes to Albert that they vote out Sophie because she is a brat, and he uses her behavior at the challenge as an example.  He then tells Albert about his final three deal with Ozzy.  When Albert confronts Coach with this information, Coach simply responds by saying that he can't wait to get Ozzy out of the game.

At Tribal Council, everything is put out on the table, including the Coach/Ozzy deal and Ozzy's belief that Sophie is a brat.  The latter especially hurts Sophie, as Ozzy tells her that while he was on Redemption Island, every person that talked with him called her arrogant, spoiled, and childish.  That was a little brow-raising for me.  I never saw Sophie that way, but it could be because I was too focused on people like Brandon and Cochran to notice.  Sophie breaks down and says this is the first time she has ever been called such things, and that it is really hard to hear Ozzy make such personal statements.

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