Survivor I, Episode 9 in Retrospect

The show itself began with Richard talking about the questions launched by meddling host Jeff Probst. "Outright lying is absolutely essential," he said in reference to the interference by Probst. Susan agreed, saying she sure wasn't going to just say that, yes indeed, they have an alliance and they're gonna knock of the rest one-by-one. Hopefully Probst won't ask such questions in the next run of the game, but I wouldn't count on it.

Meanwhile, Colleen seemed surprised that they lied about the alliance (though we are faced with the question of how she could both know they were lying and yet have done nothing about the alliance up until this point). She thought it was terrible that they would do such a thing just to get the million dollars. Terrible? No. Strategically correct? Yes. She also said a deserving person would not win. I disagree. A deserving person did win. Rich deserved it because he played the game. If playing the game meant lying to the idiot host who couldn't keep his mouth shut, so be it.

In related alliance news, Kelly really began to fall out of the alliance. She voted their way last episode, but in retrospect we know that it would be the final time. She changed her tune from a couple episodes ago, when she said people shouldn't have come to the island to have fun. Now she was whining that the alliance was no fun, just leading lambs to the slaughter, and she wasn't happy with it. Of course, later she would lie to Richard and Susan and claim she never broke with the alliance. I still don't understand why so many fans dislike Richard for his lying, but don't seem to mind Kelly's lies. Ah well.

Richard's apparent arrogance is probably one of the reasons. But he had reason to be that way – and it turned out to be justified. He talked about his fishing, but noted that his ability to bring in food is not the reason they wouldn't vote him off – he was still there because he wasn't letting them vote him off. He was right, but came awfully close this episode to being proven wrong.

His temper also played a part in this episode when he threw his fit about Rudy burning the fish. Between that temper and arrogance, it really was a good thing for him that 75% of the alliance was still solid, and Sean was still an idiot with his alphabet scheme.

That "strategy" was revealed to all in this episode. He said that while Jenna was next in line this time, he wouldn't vote for her if his would be the swing vote. Hey, dummy, how would you know if it would be the swing vote? Did he think the alliance would tell him that they were using his scheme to help them out? Also, it was interesting that in the immunity challenge, he chose to block Jenna rather than Rudy, who ended up winning.

The real action happened in the previous day's reward challenge, though, when Colleen won and picked Jenna to share her good fortune. The two of them finally decided to form a counter-alliance with Gervase, and to try to get rid of Richard. Sorry, but as Jenna said about Ramona a few episodes back, it was "a little too little too late." Perhaps they should have clued in a bit sooner. (I wonder if Colleen and Gervase happened to mention to Jenna that they voted against her last time. If so, it wasn't shown.)

They wanted to vote Rich off on his birthday, especially after he started off the day in his birthday suit. Rudy gave us one of his famous lines, saying he spent time with "a queer that ran around bare-assed half the time."

Colleen, in talking about her counter-alliance and the way the two tribes came into the merger, noted that Pagong thought everybody could be friends, but Tagi just wanted to smash them. I'd have to rate that comment a "Duh." That was the entire problem with Pagong – they were pretty much clueless that they were in a game where it was the last person standing who won. She added that the people were wishy washy, conniving, and stupid. Excuse me, but who's stupid? Maybe the Pagong folks who couldn't see the evidence for the alliance as it bit them on the rear.

In Tribal Council, Sean was asked about his alphabetical strategy, and he did admit that Pagong was first. But I still think that was a rationalization after he decided to do it and got criticized. For example, Susan said he "doesn't have enough balls" to make a decision on a vote. Ouch.

So with Sean's inadvertent help, the remaining ¾ of the Tagi alliance knocked off Jenna, and made sure that they would be safe until the very end. The seeds have been planted for the eventual breakdown in relations between Susan and Kelly, but it hasn't happened yet.

The mini-interview at the end was Sean again talking about his alphabetical voting scheme. He is still trying to rationalize it, but appears to have forgotten some of what he said on the show. He said it was intended to keep him on the island by voting off Pagong first and Tagi second, but also by masking that intent. The problems with this are twofold. First, before he was criticized he never mentioned the part about voting for Pagong first – not even in private discussions with the camera. Second, he did, in fact, mention the bit about voting for Pagong first in this week's Tribal Council, so how can he now claim he was using this scheme as a cover for that purpose? Sorry, but I still believe that it was a dumb move and he has just been trying to rationalize it away.

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