In Defense of Neleh

Since Episode 10 of Survivor: Marquesas aired, there has been a bit of a backlash against Neleh. Formerly the Survivor Sweetheart of this series, suddenly the tides are turning. I, of course, am the last person who would say we shouldn’t criticize Survivor players. After all, that’s half the fun. But in this particular case, I think it is unjustified and we are falling prey to the editing of Mark Burnett.

The main incident in question relates to the reward challenge that Paschal won, providing him with a cruise ship room for a day, plus the opportunity to take a guest. Of course, he took Neleh – there shouldn’t have been any doubt in anybody’s mind about that.

What happened after is what has caused the change of opinion in some, however. In fact, several articles on this site alone have mentioned it. Her actions were listed as the #1 Reality TV moment in the Reality Top 10 covering last week. They were also listed as a reason she should have perhaps been given the boot in the Why Tammy Should Not Have Been Voted Out article. And she is the topic of Susan & Brian’s Point/Counterpoint article this week. Other fans have been buzzing as well about this apparent change in behavior.

Neleh was shown talking and talking and talking about her time on the ship. She detailed her shower and their nice meal to a bunch of people who haven’t had either in quite a long time. This perhaps could have been excused, but she didn’t even bring anything back for them! Well, she did offer them a half-sucked mint out of her mouth, but for some reason that wasn’t accepted as a glorious gift. Then, to top it all off, she was actually shown admiring her toenails and keeping her feet clean for a short while, and Sean complained that she wasn’t doing work.

This is quite a change from the loveable sprite we’ll seen in the previous episodes. Or is it?

I think what we saw was not a change in Neleh, but simply a trick in the editing to try to make it look like last week’s episode was not quite as predictable as most of us figured it would be. To many of us, it was obvious that unless Tammy won immunity for the third time in a row, she would be sent packing. (And if she did, it would be The General.) But, as usual, Survivor’s producers tried to make us think there might be something else going on. Let’s look at each of these things individually.

First, we have Neleh being picked by Paschal to share the reward. As I noted above, there was never any doubt as to who he would bring along. The two have been the Rodger and Elisabeth of this series, and have been pretty well joined at the hip. For Paschal to take anybody else would have been a slap in Neleh’s face. I don’t care if it was Vee’s birthday or not. Heck, she apparently didn’t think the reward was important enough to even try to win the challenge.

Next, we have Neleh’s ongoing discussion of the ship and their meal. Now, was it a great idea from a strategic point of view to go on and on? No. But she was excited. She even professed a bit of embarrassment at talking about it. Apparently, Sean and Paschal had talked about their recent reward – the Marquesan feast. But that brings us to the next point: When Sean and Paschal returned, they were loaded down with food for the others. When Neleh and Paschal returned, they had nothing.

Why is this? Frankly, we don’t really know. Neleh made one comment about how she wished they could have brought some food back, but that was the extent of it. Considering that Paschal had been one of the people to “smuggle” back food last time, I doubt he would have simply decided against it this time. And Neleh had to know it would have been a good idea as well. This leads me to the simple conclusion that they were not allowed to bring any food back.

While Paschal and Sean may have been shown “smuggling” food out last time, let’s face it – the production crew knew exactly what they were doing. They were loaded down and they had cameras on them the whole time (we were even shown shots of them stashing the food). If the producers had not wanted to allow the food to be brought back, it wouldn’t have been brought back. In fact, I was a bit surprised at the time that they had allowed it, since in most previous food rewards the winners had been told (if they asked on camera) that they could not bring any back. For whatever reason, these two were allowed to bring back food.

But that was apparently not the case on the cruise ship reward. Sure, Paschal and Neleh could have probably packed their pockets with mints, bread, and the like. It would have been pretty easy. But if they were told they couldn’t, well, then they couldn’t. And I would be willing to bet this was the case. RealityNewsOnline contacted some of the past Survivor contestants, who noted that players were specifically told when they could or could not bring back extra food.

Perhaps Burnett or the other producers already had an idea to cause some friction in the camp. Perhaps they realized that allowing Sean and Paschal to bring back the food from the previous reward was a mistake. Whatever the reason, Neleh is now being blamed for something that was out of her control.

OK, so what about her alleged laziness? Well, first, let’s look at who is making the accusation: Sean. And Vee apparently went along with him. We’ll address the latter first. Vee has been back and forth when it comes to work. She aligned early on with the lazy brigade on Maraamu. Then she started working a bit harder when she was moved to Rotu. But then, in last week’s vote, she got Tammy’s vote because she was doing less work than the others. Had she lapsed back into laziness and we just didn’t see it? Was that one vote – where we heard the reason but didn’t see for whom Tammy was voting – the entire reason for the editing game this episode? Had everything led up to that in the hopes that we would think Tammy, Robert, Vee, and Sean were all voting against Neleh because of her supposed laziness?

Moving back to Sean, what more is there to say? I mean, this was Sean talking, fercryingoutloud! When you look up “lazy” in the dictionary, his photo is there. I thought he would be doing commercials for La-Z-Boy by now. He equated any amount of work with slavery! And suddenly he’s Mr. Workaholic and calling somebody else “lazy”? Give me a break.

Was Neleh enjoying her few hours of cleanliness? Yes. Can you blame her? Robert was so eager for anything clean that he stuck his whole face in her hair in a “gee-your-hair-smells-terrific” moment. The others would likely have acted similarly if they had the opportunity to get rid of some of the layers of grime.

We did see her sitting around, apparently in support of Sean’s accusations. But how much did we actually see? Two, maybe three, minutes? C’mon, even the busiest beaver has to rest once in a while. Now, I’m not claiming she was the busiest of ‘em all there, because I simply don’t know, but since we pretty much only have Sean’s word and a couple minutes of video to go by, I’m not willing to simply accept that she has become the new, well, Sean.

As Jerry noted in his Top 10 article, mentioned earlier, Neleh didn’t get a single vote. Perhaps this will become a larger issue once Robert is gone and the remaining five have to turn against each other. Maybe Sean and Vee will try to use it to woo Kathy to their side. Or maybe it will be like so many other tangential plot points – used once to try to mislead us and then ignored forever after.

Whatever the outcome, I think we just have to keep in mind that the producers reign supreme on Survivor. If they want somebody to “smuggle” food, they will; if they don’t want to allow any food, it won’t happen. If they want to make somebody look a certain way for a brief period of time, they can almost certainly find the footage to do so. If they want players to talk about each other, they can ask leading questions in the private interviews, and then use them out of context. We’ve seen it before, we’ll see it again. In large part, that’s what makes Survivor so interesting. But we should remember to give credit and blame where they belong.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline. He can be reached at david.bloomberg@pobox.com.

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