Lex Discusses the Survivor Screw-Up

"The game continues," Kelly Goldsmith remarked when I asked her what she thought about the latest Survivor screw up. “Screw up” is what CBS calls it, not a scandal, not a fix, just an honest mistake. In case you have not been following this story previously, you can catch up on the aforementioned mistake here.

An honest mistake that could have cost Lex or Tom a million dollars. Although that kind of screw up might make some of us pull our hair out every time we relived that moment when Jeff Probst revealed that Lex was WRONG (enter nightmarish reverb for echo here), Lex is amazingly Zen about the whole thing. "It just was not meant to be," Lex told me last night while making spaghetti and meatballs for his family (it was his turn to cook).

While talking to Lex, an entertainment news program ran the story and he paused to watch. It was a surreal moment – I, the reporter, asking Lex about an issue he was knee-deep involved with while listening to the sounds from Lex’s TV set report on the very issue we were discussing. Lex insists that contrary to what had been reported elsewhere, no one told him he had to be quiet. There was no kind of gag order issued. CBS did not pull any kind of confidentiality agreement out and try to hide behind it.

So why didn't Lex talk about it? Why didn't he run to the nearest Law office and hire a lawyer to sue the pants off of CBS?

For one, Lex says, suing is not his style. He prefers a more graceful, decent way of life.

Had he gone public with the information, he may have looked like he was pulling a Stacey Stillman (a contestant from the first series who sued CBS and Survivor producers over allegations that Mark Burnett interfered with the game to get her voted out) and would have appeared to be a bad sport. And the fact is, he is very happy with what happened in the game. Even the mistake that CBS made, he says, was part of the whole game. "Like life," Lex says "Survivor was not always fair."

It's hard to imagine Lex has always been so easy-going about the situation. Imagine the time all 16 Survivors were sitting in the CBS green room watching the finale. The Survivor jury members were dressed in their "costumes" a half hour before they were due to go live with the final jury count and the question of the piercing came up. Lindsey called out "ME." Then Lex turned his card over on the TV screen, and Jeff Probst said "WRONG." A wave of shock hit the room followed by the realization of what had just happened. The question, "what happens now?" was brought up and Mark Burnett not only was not sure, but did not really have time to think about it at that moment. Instead, he reviewed tapes, he looked at applications. Perhaps Lindsey could have made a mistake and accidentally told them she was pierced, but it wasn't the case.

According to Lex, Burnett was just sick about the whole thing. To make it up to Lex, who really would have happy with an admission that a mistake had been made and an apology, CBS upped his and Tom's winnings to $100,000. According to Lindsey's take on what each of them earned, this would have been about $15,000 more than Lex had won by taking third place and $25,000 more for Tom. CBS did not pay out an additional $200,000, as reported in the NY Post -- the amount between both Lex and Tom was more like $40,000. That money is still not a million bucks and neither is it the kind of life changing fame that comes with being crowned the sole Survivor.

Lex tries not to dwell on what might have been, and has gotten to a point where he is happy and comfortable with the outcome of the game. It was not in the cards for him to win the million, Lex says, as much as he tried to fight fate, he knew when he got so sick and lost the final immunity challenge that it was out of his control. Still, there are people like me who come along and ask him to open up a wound and then rub salt in it by asking him to tell us what might have been. It is a good bet that Lex could have won the trivia challenge in a tie-breaker if he’d been credited with a correct answer, and then gone on to eliminate Kim (instead of Tom, who was voted off at the time). It is also a good bet that Tom might have fallen before Lex on the final immunity challenge and left Lex the winner (recall that Ethan fell quite early). Either way, had Tom or Lex won, I asked Lex – would he have chosen Tom over Ethan to go with him to the final two jury vote? It's a tough call, and perhaps before Tom was voted out Lex had a plan. But to ask Lex to pick what might have been, after the fact, is not something he wants to think about. He isn't really 100% sure since it never came to pass. It has been written that since Tom and Lex had a pact made in the name of their children that Lex would have chosen Tom rather than Ethan, but at this point Lex does not want to go there.

The strongest emotion that Lex felt regarding the situation was surprise. Surprise that a major production like Survivor with a million dollar prize would make such a monumental mistake, but that is really as far as it goes. He trusts that Burnett or CBS did not intend for this to happen on purpose, it is what it is and the fact remains that he did not win, and at any other point after the piercing question could have lost the game anyway, so he will leave the massive speculation to the rest of us. He has dinner to fix.

Peggy Keller is Mother and Behavior Therapist to her two autistic sons and teenage daughter.

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