DAAANNNNNIIIIII!!!
Yeah baby! Danni is sole survivor. And it’s freakin’ awesome.
Can you believe it? It was the oddest of finales too. What else do you call a finale where the person who wins is both very deserving and just an all-out likeable person til the end? What else do you call a finale where the jury is remarkably level-headed and don’t crucify the final two for daring to play the game? What else do you call a finale that induces far more warm fuzzy feelings than anything else?
But that’s exactly what happened with the finale. I even found myself feeling charitable towards Steph and felt for her a little when Danni buried her in voting. What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with Survivor? Why is the world all askew?
After the usual fifteen minute-long summing-up of the season, the finale proper began with everyone bursting with happiness over making the final four. Lydia was so happy she immediately went into ecstatic convulsions at the final treemail poem. I usually go into convulsions at treemail too but it’s the bad poetry that does it to me.
Lydia informed the other disappointed castaways that her insane delight was not as a result of a promised feast but because Mark Burnett had paid off some starving Guatemalan family to perform an ‘ancient Mayan ritual’ and the castaways were going to be a part of it.
According to Lydia, the grounds they were living on are extremely ‘scared’. I’d probably be scared too if a group of crazy Americans were living on me but I assume Lydia meant ‘sacred’ and that her internal spellcheck didn’t distinguish between the two.
But what’s a bit of bad spelling among the Maya? Mathematics was more their thing anyway. Bring on the sacred tribal ritual that Burnett slotted in an effort to inject his gameshow with a little culture and seriousness.
The castaways took part in…a ritual sacrifice. Hooray! Disappointingly it was only an animal sacrifice and none of the Survivors got to experience being offered up to the Maya gods upon the bloodied steps of the pyramids. A chicken was sacrificed instead. PETA immediately pledged to firebomb Mark Burnett’s offices.
Steph treated this ancient and sacred ritual with all the respect you’d expect. She fixated on the food involved and kept asking whether she could eat the honey and chicken being burned. The man performing the ritual sternly refused, asserting the chicken was a sacrifice meant for the gods.
Once the tribal grounds had been cleansed (or partly cleansed anyway since it would take an entire farmyard’s worth of animals being sacrificed just to chase away Judd’s impurities), it was time for the second-to-last IC, which was notable for two reasons. The first was that Rafe won yet again and the second was that it was an amazing-looking maze in the shape of a macaw. A pay rise for the set designers at once!
Back at camp, Steph’s mind turned towards once more towards a pressing and urgent issue. No, silly, not who she should vote out of the game to increase her chances. Rather Steph’s mind wandered back to the sacrificed chicken just sitting there, all charred and tender.
Surely it wouldn’t be so bad if she ate the chicken, right? Just because it was part of a religious ritual and she was explicitly told it wasn’t for eating doesn’t mean anyone would mind if she were to have a taste. After all, the chicken was meant for the gods and Steph is a god herself so it wouldn’t technically be blasphemy if she took it for herself.
So Steph took the sacrificial chicken back to camp where she, Lydia and Danni feasted on forbidden flesh. Yum, sacrilicious. Rafe refused because eating it would tarnish his Mr Sensitive Culturally Enlightened image.
That’s nuts. I’m also one of those sensitive arty farty culturally enlightened types but I would eat that chicken so fast. But then, I’m also a heretic. In any religion.
The women laughed off Rafe’s discomfort and ate their devil chicken. A raging storm immediately descended upon them, scaring the *bleep!* out of them. “The Mayan gods are angry with us,” they whispered in terrified awe.
All this talk about angry Mayan gods is of course superstitious nonsense. Everyone knows the real reason a storm broke after they’d eaten the chicken is because Mark Burnett gained the power to control the weather when he sold his soul to Satan all those years ago.
Eventually I stopped typing about every detail I remembered and got to the first TC. The chicken issue was regurgitated, so to speak, by Jeff and we got some really hilarious shots of the castaways shuffling and behaving like guilty schoolchildren.
Steph and Rafe then had to vote for the person they thought it would be better to take with them to the final three. It was a tough choice they had to make. After all, Danni would pose a very big threat to win immunity, had at least three jury votes absolutely sewn up, and was a cheerful, amicable person who hadn’t really pissed off anyone thus far.
Lydia on the other hand could not win a challenge if her life depended on it, and could very easily find herself crippled by accusations of ‘riding coattails’ and not deserving to be in the final two. Oh whoever would Steph and Rafe choose?
I’ll give you a clue. It rhymes with Blydia.
So Lydia pancake danced off in what would turn out to be a monumental error in judgement by Steph and Rafe.
With three survivors left, it was time for the March of the Dead Survivors. We were reminded of the survivors who had come before and we had long since forgotten
As they burned the first contestant, Jim’s, picture, Danni reflected how if it hadn’t been for Jim, they wouldn’t have won the first hectic IC. That’s why you voted him out. Ingrates.
Remember Morgan, Brianna and Brooke, those interchangeable young, pretty girls who were voted out successively? Yeah, me neither. Well, I remember Brooke because she was a cutie. Remember Blake, he of the blinding teeth and cleavagey girlfriend? Well, his teeth sparkle even in his pencil-drawn picture.
Remember such lovely people as Margaret, Brian, Amy and Brandon? Loved them. Remember our sweet, gentle, humble, crazy caveman, Bobby-Jon? Adored him. Wow, I really did like an abnormally large percentage of this season’s cast, didn’t I?
Remember paranoid Jamie and Judd the gorilla? Remember sweet Gary, he of the fake name and cunning schemes? Remember Whatserface, with the monkeys and the car? Remember Lydia, the dancing monkey?
Their senses numbed by this interminable ritual, Jeff sprung the final IC upon the final three. It was an endurance challenge involving balancing, rope-holding and painful spinal injuries. Rafe went out fairly early, leaving Steph and Danni uncomfortably perched against poles in a titanic battle.
Who would win? The skinny, athletic chick? Or the other less-skinny athletic chick? Racked with pain, Steph was no match for the mentally resolute Danni, whose nerve endings had long ago died from lack of nutrients and thus felt no pain. Steph slid off her pole like a wet fish.
Steph cried and Danni, sweetheart that she is, immediately set to work comforting her by telling her what a tough competitor she’d been. You’re a good person, Danni. What the hell are you doing in the Survivor final two anyway?
As he watched his chances to win a million slipping away, Rafe decided he would be magnanimous. He would not be Tomlike, guilt-tripping his way to the final two.
Rafe: I release you from your promise to take me to the final two, Danni. I can’t possibly put you in the position of having to choose between your promise to me and the million dollars. Follow your heart. I won’t hold it against you, whatever you do.
Jeff: And the sixteenth person voted off Survivor is…Rafe.
Rafe: Godammit, Danni, you betrayed me! I am so voting for Steph.
Oh for crap’s sake. I should’ve known he was going to act like that after that whole snotty car business last week. What the hell is the point of giving someone an out if you’re just going to hold it against you when they take it?
Rafe rode away on his high horse, leaving Steph and Danni as the final two. Very canny of Danni to take Steph with her to final two. What better way of avoiding that final barrage of slings and arrows form the jury then by taking a human shield with you?
Steph and Danni’s final act before facing the dreaded jury was to burn their camp while shouting “We’re sorry about the chicken, o mighty Mayan gods! Here, have our camp.” Bad juju averted, they returned to TC for the final hurdle.
The opening speeches went thusly:
Danni: Ha ha. No-one thought I was a threat and I totally owned your asses. But I’m so loveable you don’t care. Wanna come over to Kansas for a barbecue afterwards?
Steph: I came into this game with a huge target on my back. And from the way you’re all looking at me, I’m pretty sure the target’s gotten even bigger. Oh *bleep!*, you all hate me. But wait, I’m prepared to answer any questions you have in a futile attempt to change your minds.
The jury questions were mostly free of bitterness and insanity so I’ve forgotten most of them. BJ asked something about how proud they were while Cindy talked about…something. Gary made some metaphor about how life was a competition, shredding all remaining credibility about being a landscaper. He should’ve talked about life being a garden.
Both Steph and Danni did similarly well in their answers. They both blew a couple too. Someone (Jamie? Cindy?) asked Danni who her final five would be had she had she had the numbers, and she bravely refused to suck up by naming two people who were going to vote for her anyway and one person who didn’t even make the jury:
Danni: My final five would be me, Gary, Bobby Jon and Brandon. We made a great team and had fun together.
Someone Who’s Possibly Jamie: That’s only four. Can’t you count?
Danni: Look at who’s sitting on the jury and who managed to survive and make the final two and tell me whether I can count.
Steph threw away her dancing monkey former’s vote by completely dissing her in her answer.
Lydia: Steph, I was loyal and I danced for you since the beginning of the game yet you betrayed me. Why did you pick Danni over me? Pleeeaaassse explain yourself so I can love you again, my mistress.
Steph: The only way I wanted to win was against the best competition I could. If I were to win by taking an easy and useless opponent like you into the final two, then that would be a dishonourable win. Danni is a worthy opponent and deserves to sit here. What kind of person would I be if I took an undeserving hanger-on with me to the final two instead?
Lydia: Danni, do you spell your name with one ‘n’ or two?
Judd…well, Judd tried to be witty and failed miserably. He likened Danni to an ice-skater, skating her way through the game. Yes, she skated through the game with remarkable athleticism, skill and grace while Judd fell through the ice and was eaten by rabid seals. Thanks for the apt metaphor, Judd.
Judd then got on his high horse (well, he tried but flattened the poor beast) and accused Steph of crossing the line when she lied to his wife about taking him to final two with her.
Somewhere from the depths of hell, Twila’s son is all “She lied to your wife? Dude, that’s nothing. My mother damned me to an eternity of fiery torment when she swore on my name.”Or possibly Judd is full of *bleep!*. As usual.
Rafe’s questions made it obvious how much he resented Danni and how he was going to vote for Steph. He lobbed a pathetically easy question to Steph which basically amounted to “Steph, you dominated this game with amazing ease. Tell me about some amazing piece of strategic brilliance that I don’t know about so I may worship at your feet.”
For Danni’s question, he asked for her to justify not taking him to the final two with her.
My God, Rafe. Shut up! You lost all tenuous moral justification to moan about that when you released her from her promise. What kind of self-serving garbage is it to grant someone the free will to make a choice and then punish them when they enact that free will and choose wrongly? Has Rafe been taking deity lessons from Steph? Does he think he’s a god now too?
Bloody Rafe.
But even Rafe and Judd’s variety of sour grapes weren’t all that sour. Just a bit tangy. Breathing sighs of relief that they’d gotten the mellowest jury ever, Danni and Steph gave their final speeches:
Steph: I was responsible for your exits. I outwitted, outlasted and outplayed all of you. But come on. Don’t be a hater. Vote for me.
Danni: She was responsible for all your exits. Blame her. But I also outwitted, outlasted and outplayed all of you. So it’s still cool to vote for me.
The jury voted and Jeff hopped on his helicopter back to civilisation, leaving the survivors to trek through the jungle to safety themselves. Back in LA, Danni and Steph had both put on such much-needed weight and a ton of not-so-needed lip gloss.
Still, shiiiiiny lips aside, Danni looked like a million very hot bucks. Which was appropriate since she proceeded to win herself a million bucks.
In the end all the jury members, except bloody Rafe, voted for Danni. And you know what? She deserves it over Steph.
Steph played a good game. She’s right – she did come into it with a target on her back but she used her fame to her advantage and managed to get in a dominant position. But she also pissed it away by making strategically stupid decisions and voting off the wrong people. Judd and Lydia were probably the only two people Steph would’ve had a shot against in the final two. She lost the game when she voted off Lydia instead of Danni.
Danni came from a numerical minority and managed to make the right moves at the right times. She won immunity when she had to. She got the votes she needed to save herself at the right time. She showed brains, tenacity, initiative and timing.
Fab game, Danni. Well done on your much-deserved victory. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.