Survivorfest - week 14 - the finale

Parvarti flirts her way past Amanda into a cool million!


Congratulations to all of our winners, especially our top money winner Mike Bonham at $130!


My thoughts on the finale of the sixteenth season of Survivor:


Fresh from blindsiding the hapless Erik, the coven celebrated with a group cackle. They simply could not believe that Erik would be that stupid. Evidently they don't read my blog, either.


They remarked that the men kept falling for the same trick over and over again. I think that's been the case since the beginning of time. It's in our nature.


Natalie tried bonding with Parvarti. I wonder if Parv remembered the "flossing my teeth with his jugular" comment. That's one of those comments that should stick with a person...


At the immunity challenge Probst noted that the women appeared to "feel good about themselves." Yeah, I would say so.


The challenge was for each of the players to sit atop of pillar and drip water from a pail into a bamboo tube to float a key up to their platform. The key would then be used to unlock a set of shaped rungs that fit in a particular way on a ladder. The first one up the ladder would win immunity.


Natalie filled her tube first and hit the water. I would have enjoyed having man-eating sharks waiting for her. Ah, well. Maybe next season.


Soon, all three were at work on the ladder. For some reason Natalie had a blur on the right side of her chest. No idea what that is about. Maybe she has a nasty mole or something. Or maybe a Jeff Probst tattoo. Why can't they let us in on these things?


I wonder if Probst ever gets a cell phone call when he's giving color commentary...


"And Amanda's the first to reach the...er...um...yeah, I want the red one...oh, Natalie fell off the...no, not cherry red, the other one..."


Amanda won the challenge and immunity. You know the rest of the competition sucks when Amanda wins a challenge.


Afterward, Cirie was busting Amanda's chops: "the only reason you beat me is 'cause your legs are longer than mine!" Uh huh.


Back at camp the women decided to let the remaining chicken, Gloria, go. Natalie indicated that Gloria should find a male rooster and that if she's like any of the rest of the females on the island she'll mate with him and then rip out his throat. Again, the others should really be writing this stuff down so they remember later.


Walking to tribal council, Natalie grabbed Parvarti's ass! What is up with this season!?!


As the jury filed in, they were still laughing at Erik.


Oh, and Ozzie is still pissed.


Probst made a passing hint that this season would see the final be between two Survivors and not three.


After this, Cirie made a remark about being at the bottom of the alliance between Amanda and Parvarti. Amanda took exception to this and it started an argument between the two.

Strangely, Amanda didn't want to give up immunity. I guess there is only one Erik.


Speaking of Erik, he seemed to be paying a lot more attention to what was going on now that he was a member of the jury. Maybe he was just thinking about ice cream.


Natalie was voted out, the last fan standing.


Back at camp, Amanda and Cirie were at it again. I agree with Cirie...Amanda and Parvarti seemed really tight, and Cirie had a chance to stand up for Amanda earlier and didn't want the vote to go to a tie.


Parvarti looked on in a glazed sort of way and Amanda broke down crying. Evidently the back to back seasons were catching up on her.


Her primary worry became the though of another immunity challenge and another tribal council. Which led to this:


Parvarti: "There's no way there is a final two"

Cirie: "Don't say that 'cause you're always wrong."


As the night crept in, Cirie wondered "Did you find that machete? All that yelling made me thirsty." I halfway suspect Natalie has it.


The next day the ladies were sent to the typical hike to honor those that were voted off before them. And the promise of another immunity challenge to bring the remaining vote to just two players. At this point Amanda broke down.


A winner-take-all-immunity to get to the jury vote! Is it too much to hope that it's mud wrestling?

Some people really hate the walk-through where the remaining members honor the previously voted off Survivors, but I enjoy it. My favorite part is when they get to someone that everyone hated but they feel compelled to say something nice, like "ahhhh, Jean-Robert...! You were, umm...quite a competitor!"

I also enjoy the revisionist history sound bite that they use. I'll point one out in a moment.

Here are some of the clips that struck me as interesting or amusing:

First out was Fairplay: "I consider myself the cerebral assassin." To me that means he kills the intelligent thinking process. I would agree.

Mary was disappointed to have been voted out very early on and to have been blindsided, to boot. She still doesn't understand why.

Yau-Man out with class and dignity. So rare in reality TV these days.

Mikey B. - He's going to have to get another goofy, random tattoo to account for his time on the show.

Joel is still pissed about getting voted off before Chet. The last shot of him lying, senseless and covered with sand in a beached long boat was priceless. He looked like a three-day-old corpse.

Chet: "I went out in a beautiful way." This would be the revisionist history bit I referred to earlier. Chet, you quit. Your tribe begged you to stay on and you wouldn't do it. On the bright side, you were good with the chickens.

Kathleen still seemed like a mental wreck. Don't expect to see her on another Survivor favorites show.

Eliza's video clips reminded me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings..

Ozzy is still pissed.

Jason was proud to have been just as good a competitor and a provider as Ozzy. I wonder if he's as proud of going out the same way.

Erik: "[Survivor] opened my eyes to the way women work and operate." Just one word for you Erik...boobies!

Natalie: "Right now I'm my biggest fan." I think it's a fan club of one, Nat.

The final challenge was an endurance challenge where the players were to hold a stick horizontally and try to keep a ball in place on a groove in the top. The challenge would be in five minute increments, after which additional bars would be placed on the stick, making it harder to hold steady.

Probst warned that the challenge would require strict concentration. I figured that would have Amanda out early since she would likely be distracted by the first shiny object that caught her eye.

After two rounds, Parvarti lost her marble. Down to Cirie and Amanda.

Cirie, being a surgical nurse, would seem to have an advantage, but I came to a stunning conclusion...the ball was a shiny metal object! Amanda could stare vacantly at it for hours...

This seemed to be the determining factor as Cirie eventually lost her grip and the challenge, sending Amanda to an unprecedented back-to-back immunity win. Probst had to make whistling noises and flash some tin foil in her line of vision to get Amanda to let go of the bar.

Back to camp. Both Cirie and Parvarti did their best to convince Amanda to keep them in the game. At this point it seemed like kind of a toss-up...both have bad blood with the jury. Both were in pretty much the same blindsides...didn't appear to be much to choose from. Parvarti seemed pretty confident, though.

Amanda also seemed to think that Cirie would be more convincing to the jury than Parvarti.

I figured Cirie was out because of the following:

1. Parv stood by her when Amanda was to get voted out (blindside of Alexis due to the hidden immunity idol) and Cirie didn't want to take a chance on getting kicked out due to a tie vote.

2. Cirie was my last person and this season, while entertaining, hasn't been kind to me from a monetary standpoint.

At tribal council Amanda whined about winning immunity: "it's like a blessing and a curse!" A quick shot to Erik and you could almost hear him thinking "winning immunity didn't do much for me, either!"

More whining ensued, followed by much eye-rolling by Eliza and Erik.

Amanda cast the only vote, and Cirie was done.

In her post-exit synopsis she apologized to her family for falling short of the million dollars. Smelled like an effort at the $100k Survivor favorite vote, to me.

So we're down to Amanda and Parvarti. If someone had told me that this Season would have ended with these two being the only ones left I would have insisted on pre-Survivorfest drug screening.

At the jury council:

As the jury strolled in, it seemed to me that most of them were gazing adoringly at Amanda and that most of them were glaring at Parvarti. That's probably a bad sign for someone.

Probst asked each of the jury to address Amanda and Parv and ask any questions they had. Here are some of the notable ones (paraphrasing, slightly):

Eliza had no question to ask. To Parvarti she said: "You're a bitch and I hate you!"

To Amanda she said "you spent most of the season with a vacant look on your face...was that an act? You disgust me!"

And then she sat down. All she needed was to add a "we haaaaatessss them, don't we preeeeecioussss?"

Alexis stepped up on her soapbox, indicating that her work revolved around young girls and asked why each thought they were a role model to young women. Um. It's Outwit, Outlast and Outplay...I don't remember anything about being a good role-model. Role models don't make for good reality TV.

Natalie asked how Parvarti's flirting translated from her Survivor game into the bedroom. This just about brought down the house. Even Probst didn't quite know what to make of it. Natalie just kept going on about the flirting and the relationship they had. Kinda made me wonder if it was a coming out party for her.

Erik told Amanda that she was like a big sister...or a cousin. He then proceeded to rip her for being so mean to him at his last two tribal councils.

James seemed to think that Amanda had it "in the bag". He asked Parvarti if she felt like talking smack about her work this season. She replied with "you mean like, Hah hah, I got you sucka!" Guess the honeymoon is over for those two.

My favorite was Ozzy. "I may be the biggest idiot here." In fairness, I think we all agreed it was Erik.

He then went on to have what can only be described as a "Billy moment".

To Parvarti (paraphrasing) "You're a bitch and I hate you."

To Amanda "I loooooooove you!" Extra slobbering omitted.

I thought he was going to propose to her right there. At least someone would've asked a question!

My wife pointed out that, since Ozzy was in love with Amanda, then Erik (Ozzy Jr.) would almost certainly vote for her as well. This turned out to be the case, as Erik indicated he was filling to forgive and forget.

Eliza went to cast her vote and agonized over it for several minutes. I thought that Probst was going to have to call her down. She clearly couldn't decide whether to vote for someone she loathed (Parvarti) and someone she didn't respect (Amanda).

The votes were tallied and Parvarti won by two votes. I think this was a fitting conclusion to one of the wildest Survivor season ever.

I've had a great time blogging all of this. I hope you enjoyed the ranting and the game. I'll be in touch for the third installment of Survivorfest in the fall for anyone who wants to give it another shot.