Survivor I, Episode 12 in Retrospect

After the secret, we move into the episode itself. It begins, as the others since the tribes merged have, by talking about how they are now one tribe, Rattana. Of course, this really isn't true anymore. With all the Pagong gone, it's back to Tagi again. Or, more specifically, the Tagi Alliance Plus Sean.

But the alliance has been breaking down with the Sue/Kelly problems. Meanwhile, Rudy emphasizes that his word is good – and indeed, we would later see that it is so good that it extends beyond his banishment! But Sean reports to the camera that everybody is going around saying bad things about the others behind their backs. He says, "This is the most conniving bunch of people I've ever met in my life." Rich calls it Machiavellian and loves it.

This episode was the one in which Sue and Kelly really got into it, swearing at each other and all. Sue is upset that Kelly stabbed her in the back. So what does she do? She goes fishing and gets stabbed by a stingray. Some days you just can't win.

Meanwhile, Kelly lies flat-out to Rich and claims that she was never out of the alliance, but was acting as part of it by befriending the Pagong and making them feel safe. And this is the woman who claimed that she was against lying and all that, and has, since the show ended, talked about how she was sorry she joined the alliance because it was immoral? Give me a break. Later she claimed, to Jeff Probst, "We're not evil, we just play bad people on TV." But she also tells the camera, when discussing who she'll vote against, "It's time to get dirty." She can't seem to make up her mind.

Rich sees all of this and figures it's to his advantage. He knows they won't join forces against him, and he certainly ends up right with that one! Because of the fight, there would be no way Sue would ever vote for Kelly as part of the jury (indeed, she would instead make her infamous speech), so that's one for Rich.

Oddly, Kelly specifically tells Sue that she will do everything she can to keep her out of the final four. Yet when it comes down to it next episode, she first votes against Rich! Of course, even in this episode she says that she will vote against either Rich or Sue, but then ends up voting against Sean with the rest of them. The woman just can't seem to make up her mind!

For his part, Sean finally decides that he is in it to win a million dollars. Really? Is that why everybody's here? Just catching on to that now, are you? A little late, since it's your last episode, Sean. Buh-bye.

And so it went. Sean was voted off, and it was down to the final four.

Rudy had a "Survivor Secret" at the end of this episode – one of the better ones of the bunch. He discussed why his answers to the trivia questions of the immunity challenge from this episode were all "I dunno." He said, flat out, that he didn't know the answers because he hadn't listened to a word that Jeff Probst was saying, and he didn't really care because he knew he was safe in the alliance. Now that's confidence!

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