JOHN L. ON SURVIVOR 1

The Summer of 2000 will not be remembered for any one movie that captured the attention of America.  The movies this summer seemed to lack drama, action, humor, strong gay characters, backstabbing, scarred legs, hot pants, Navy Seals, pierced tongues, interesting tattoos, smarmy hosts, Tiki gods, cooked rats, alliances, tallying, torches, and of course Reebok.  No, only one thing had all of those things and much more and that was CBS's Survivor.  I was one of the millions of people who watched the entire show and was enthralled by the whole thing.  However, there are more people around who never watched an episode or just saw the final one where Richard "Naked Gay Guy" Hatch won the million dollars.  As the series played out, it seemed like you were watching a movie on the big screen because it somehow took 16 contestants and one slightly annoying host at random and created something that in some weird ways represents ourselves.  

The thing that people who did not watch the show want to know is why did people watch something that on the surface looks boring, stupid, mean, sexist, racist, queer, annoying, unpleasant, gross, loud, wet, slimy, and just plain not that interesting.  If you did not watch, then you will never understand the drama of who would win what challenge and who would be voted out each week.  And due to the editing of CBS, they would make you think one person would be going, and then someone else would get the boot.  What put the show over the top was when CBS tricked the public into hating Richard the eventual winner so much that they could not possibly believe he would be picked by a jury of exiled castaways in the final vote.  Many people thought Gretchen the smart, field guide, school teacher would make it all the way.  She got taken out half way through.  Then there was the Gervase Peterson internet hoax that made the public think that  the lazy and bad swimming basketball YMCA coach would win which pissed off many people in late June and most of July.  When Gervase was voted off, all speculation was thrown out and the public realized it was going to be a lot harder to see where this was headed.    

The other thing that happened was when poor single mother Jenna did not receive a special family video when everyone else had theirs.  She cried and broke down and it became one of the most famous parts of the show.  In the opening credits of each show since the first episode they showed Jenna crying and the question was why?  When it was answered, it was one of the saddest moments of the year.  The other part that attracted the masses was the pontificating of America's sweetheart, Colleen who would goof on Richard's weight and bad attitude.  She lasted a long time, and when she was voted off she told the remaining four to "play nice."  That Colleen was just too cute.  Not Playboy material, but just the perfect girl next door look.  I found Jenna more attractive, but Colleen was legit even though she had bugs living in her legs.  The island cuisine also was a major part of the success.  They ate rice most of the time, but the beheading and roasting of rats became a fascination for the public. There was also Rich fishing for stingrays which helped him remain on the island since no one else knew how to fish.  But, in episode 2, there was the immunity challenge of eating live bug larvae.  This was the sickest thing I had seen all year and it put the show over the top and it never looked back.   When it came down to the final four of Rudy, Sue, Kelly, and Rich, everyone though Rudy the Navy Seal who complained about the bare assed queer and lesbian activity was the shoo in for the million.  Web sites and other news organizations would say that their sources said that crazy Rudy would win it.  He came in 3rd place.  Sue had been voted out just before Rudy, and she did not take it well.  If there was any doubt that Survivor had an amazing array of characters, Susan ripped Kelly a new one in her famous animal rant about rats, snakes, and vultures.  For those of you who did not see it or want to remember exactly what she said, here is Susan Hawk's speech to Kelly and Richard at the final Survivor Tribal Council:

"Um... I have no questions, I just have statements. 

Rich: You're a very openly arrogant, pompous human being, but I admire your frankness with it. You have worked hard to get where you're at, and you started working hard way before you came to the island. So with my work ethic background, I give that credit to you. But, on the other hand, your inability to admit your failures without going into a whiny speech makes you a bit of a loser in life. 

Kelly: The rafting personae queen, you did get stomped on, on national TV by a city boy that never swam - let alone been in the woods or jungle or been on a boat in his life. You sucked on that game. Anyways, I was your friend at the beginning of this, really thinking that you were a true friend. I was willing to be sitting there and put you next to me. At that time you were sweeter than me, I'm not a very openly nice person. I'm just frank, forward, and telling it the way it is. 

To have you sit there next to me and me lose $900,000 dollars just to stomp on somebody like this. [Motions to Richard.] But as the game went along and the two tribes merged, you lied to me, which showed me the true person that you are. You're very two-faced and manipulative to get where you're at anywhere in life, that's why you fail all the time. So at that time of the game, I decided just to go out with my alliance to my family, and just to hold my dignity and values in check and hope I hadn't lost too many of them and... uh... play the game just as long as possible and hang in there as long as possible. 

But Kelly, go back to a couple times Jeff said to you, "what goes around comes around." It's here. You will not get my vote. My vote will go to Richard, and I hope that is the one vote that makes you lose the money. If it's not, so be it, I'll shake your hand and I'll go on from here but if I was ever to pass you along in life again and you were laying there dying of thirst, I would not give you a drink of water. I would let the vultures take you and do whatever they want with you, with no ill regrets. 

I plead to the jury tonight to think a little bit about the island that we have been on. This island is pretty much full of only two things: snakes and rats. And in the end of mother nature we have Richard the snake, who knowingly went after prey, and Kelly, who turned into the rat that ran around like the rats do on this island, trying to run from the snake. I feel we owe it to the islands spirits that we've come to know to let it be, in the end, the way mother nature intended it to be - for the snake to eat the rat."

Sue pretty much summed up the whole show with that speech. This speech nearly cost Rich the winnings when people like Colleen and Jenna, and especially Gervase were extremely appalled by Sue's venomous rant.  Gervase's "she's trife" speech is fantastic and brought back some sense of morality that had been lost during Sue's tirade.  Moments like that cannot be scripted.   It was amazing to see what people are willing to do for a million dollars.  It was not always pretty, unless Colleen or Jenna were on the screen.  When Richard won, it angered many people because many thought that he was too mean and he cheated when he formed voting alliances to kick the biggest threat to him winning.  I fell for this as well.  I thought Rich was an awful person, but his villainy was very entertaining to watch and I always believed that his manipulations on the show helped make it more fun to watch.  He created the Tagi Alliance and it destroyed all of the competing Pagong members.  If you never watched the show, Tagi and Pagong are meaningless to you.  Go to www.cbs.com/survivor or www.survivorsucks.com to get the best information on all of the details of the show.  Those sites are excellent at explaining what Survivor is all about.

And what was it about?  You can believe it had some deep meaning to it, and to some extent it did.  But the reason people were enthralled by it and why it had 58 million people watching in the last half hour is because it was a mystery.  Who was going to win the million.  Many people already knew and CBS goaded America into trying to figure it out and in the end, CBS fooled us all.  Richard was always voted the last person people expected to win it all in the polls leading up to the finale.  Kelly, the second place winner played the game physically the best while Rich played the mental game perfectly.  They were the best 2 of the 16 to be in the final voting stage.  The final vote was 4 to 3 for Rich and he only got that because he picked the number 6 while Kelly picked 3 when Greg asked them to pick a number between 1 and 10.  The number was 9 by the way.  Rudy was a favorite because of his strange comments about Rich and society, but he did not play the game as well as the top 2 people and his general attitude was a little unsettling.  I won't go into the famous Rudyisms here since they have been repeated ad nauseum.  He was funny in an Archie Bunker sort of way, but he was also an honest guy who always kept his word and was a guy you could trust. That honesty endeared him to the public like no other castaway.  And that is mainly it, the people.  The mystery, the rats, the larvae, the challenges, Jeff Probst's shorts, the island, the theme music, the insects, those annoying Reebok ads, the rain, the rainbows, the chickens, the yacht, the tribal council, "I dunno," the internet, David Letterman, and even that bastard producer who fooled us all, Mark Burnett would have had nothing without the 16 people that fought to win the million dollars and the individual personalities they all brought to the show.   They were awesome.  Without characters we cared about, the show would have been pulled by the third week, and now we have Survivor 2: The Australian Outback to look forward to as well as a dozen other shows just like it over the next 2 years.  I loved this show and had fun watching it.  There will be many clones to come, but there will be nothing like the original trip to the island of Pulau Tiga.  Thank you CBS.