Like many traditions in our increasingly balkanized, Oprah-fied and effete American hodgepodge of monolithically entrenched, self-serving, philo-victimization claques, Survivor has itself become deliriously cockeyed; rapidly descending into a pitiful oedipal lament to tearful wretchedness---hardly an original intent, I would think.
Before Survivor, producer Mark Burnett was best known for a cable offering called “Eco-Challenge.” This was a hard-core, all-terrain, utterly grueling physical endurance contest which pit sponsored teams against ugly environmental milieus and each team’s own physical limits. Farcical human theatrics were fairly minimal; intrepidness was actually a tantalizing goal. Burnett’s later creation, “Survivor,” was certainly a more commercial, bedazzling attempt to thrust his more utilitarian cable exercise before the network audience mob. Yet I’m sure there must be some pause among Survivor creation teams that their 39 day backwoods odyssey has dwindled into a swamp of effusive sentimentality and irksome anticlimactic boredom.
Like nowadays, getting sued or put in prison for dangling a Christmas ornament; or some impressionable growing boys somewhere, having as their mentoring Boy Scout Troop Leader, a scatterbrained, stultifying plebeian like Lillian Morris, Survivor has been sentenced to the times. A mere three years ago one could look with satisfaction that a contestant like Richard Hatch---so well versed was he, we came to believe, in each vital catalog of human herd survivability---that he could be justly awarded the crown of “Ultimate Survivor” and given a one million dollar check and no one would blink an eye. Just this last sunday night I cringed as two moms fought over the corpulent Survivor prize, neither one of which could have survived on their Pearl Islands ecosphere (one self-admittedly) more than a day or two without relying on the wits and skills of others. And there was also a lot of yammering about legitimizing the disbursement of the million dollars to someone because that somebody is a mother and has a husband and has several children. And there was talk about someone not deserving the bounty because they didn’t have a family and admitted to “partying” and all manner of carousing. Please, somebody, let me in on the exact moment when this “Survivor” game show became a socially progressive welfare teat for haggard soccer moms.
Watching the mirthless Lillian bound into the Final Two was a nightmare. It was a fitting pay back for Survivor producers who foisted the lamebrain “Outcast” sideshow onto an otherwise respectable reality program---one of the remarkable few, at least up until that precise moment. Pandering to wholly reptilian fits of rage by returning vote-offs, and possibly egging the sorry lot on, we were subjected to the likes of Lillian and the rest, clucking endless sob stories about being subjected to being “voted off” (a known game eventuality, like death) as if each Tribal Council election was now a personal psychological shock and a hate crime. It was a manufactured moral absurdity that fizzled when it became apparent that these fabricated supplicants quickly became the scum they were quibbling about. In three short days both Lillian and Burton schemed, lied and voted another human soul off the show---each running over themselves to thrive as a member of the elitist tier of Balboans, so to speak, and to create yet another batch of disturbed “Outcasts.” The whole episode was a carnival freak show of sorts.
Yet this malfeasance adumbrated the rise of Lillian, who rose to the top on this trumped up epoch. What better way to unreverently cripple this ultimate survival-of-the-fittest television phenomenon than to introduce doubt among some, if not all, of the remaining tribe (if not much of the viewing audience) that this island journey was now about making people feel good and feel worthy. One-by-one the most skillful and physically capable people were dispensed with and by the time the Final Four rolled around, you had among them this woeful conglomeration: a maddeningly crude conniver, Jon, who lacked any physical talent (alluded to several times by Sandra as “just like a girl”); Darrah, who barely said three words, appearing mostly bored stiff, before luckily winning three Immunity Challenges in a row (one for simply having thin, reed-like wrists and forearms); Sandra who, while pushing some small fits of sly designing on her own, shrugged that she arrived hither because others had “bigger fish to fry”; and Lillian.
Lillian. Who is as cunning and polished as a cow. Lillian who arrived on the Survivor show a middle-aged woman ornamented like a peacock in a Boy Scout Troop Leader uniform. I can’t recall any other Survivor contestant ever who had the scrambled brains to wear their work uniform on the show. Even some stud like the 70-ish Rudy Boesch, from the premier Survivor, who spent his whole bloody life in the Navy (a Navy Seal!) had the sense to leave his resplendent suit of armor at home. It has to do something with ego separation---being able to differentiate between your cognitive self and the person who gets up and clocks in at some factory or volunteers at a soup kitchen. I suppose you can also call it having attained some level of maturity and insight, or not. Self-awareness, or not.
Lillian, who said she HAD to wear her uniform because she had no other clothes to wear due to, as she puts it, “sixteen years of volunteering.” I suppose people believing that complete horseshit would be prone to believe almost anything as long as it had some emotional slobbering to it. But then again, this is what Lillian signals with her agitated red flags flapping constantly above her head and what Survivor: Pearl Islands digressed into once two sore losers were allowed to reenter the game as King and Queen Bellyache.
Lillian, whose string of convoluted contradictory babbling stretches off into the yonder horizon, says things like: “Survivor is not for the faint of heart. It is hard on you and you have to be mentally prepared and you have to be physically prepared”; and since she was uniquely and grossly faint of heart, and uniquely and grossly unprepared both mentally and physically for what she encountered, I wondered what the heck she was doing as the Master Of The Universe going into the Final Two. Lillian may have explained things thus: “I came into this game not knowing a huge amount about it. But, I’m still here.” So, her previous statement is meaningless when placed in tandem with this verbiage. Does one have to be prepared or not? Does Lillian even have the foggiest notion of what she imparts as knowledge, or does she simply undulate her vocal chords when words work their magical way into her brain?
Lillian, who carried not an original, masterful thought in her head beyond asking and reasking for a rehash of previously rehashed instructions from Burton or Jon so she could continue in her role as traitorous Morgan dupe who sold her vote in exchange for upward mobility with people more skillful and able than she. First, it was explained this was done as a revenge motive on behalf of the “Outcasts,” and later after voting out (and lying to) the one “Outcast” most likely to win it all, Burton, she explained her motivation as being “for Lil” and because she wanted to put her daughter through medical school. Lillian, who waxed and waned unceasingly and loudly about her moral dilemmas, unabashedly lied and tricked as much as any other lout---while representing a youth mentoring institution that coils around a strict moral code, no less! Lillian, who hardly won a single Challenge until she found her calling in endurance squatting.
I have to say, though, that Burton and Jon proved to be boneheads themselves time and again. The game was theirs to lose and they lost it. The instant Burton won the final Reward Challenge and selected Jon to drive into the Panamanian ruins and feast with him, their awful fate was sealed shut. They left a majority of the remaining Balboa tribe alone to tinker and plot their ouster. Both Burton and Jon made snide remarks about the three remaining women being somehow too ignorant to hatch a mutinous subplot which was fairly ignorant and fantastic in itself. Jon’s apparent misogynist theatrics---Jon, the self-described “King of Men”---may have played a part in his rants about his viselike grip on power and the females’ inability to loosen it, but Burton’s more moderate tones may indicate that he was just too weary of another Reward break being spent with the likes of Lillian. That aside, with only a few more days to go before show’s end, it was arguably the dumbest strategic move any alliance has ever made. If Burton had chosen Lillian and reassured her of a Final Two ending, and Jon had remained at Balboa and reiterated his bond with Darrah, I believe their juggernaut would have remained unstoppable. It was a lot to lose for cruising in an SUV with a bud, some testosterone down time, and some grapes and cheese. Upon their return to Balboa soil, their discernment and prophecies of what the women had supposedly hatched while they were away was astonishing to watch. Yet it was too late for that. They forged a fiasco.
It has to trigger some kind of commentary and make some eyebrows crooked, that of the strongest three players in the game---Rupert, Jon and Burton (in that order)---not one made it into the Final Two. It has to bespeak that something is awkwardly amiss in the Survivor game mechanics and processes that for too many seasons people who are flusteringly mediocre, mostly unskilled and inhibiting, have abruptly popped-up at the end of the show to win one million dollars and colossal titles that regularly warrant a snicker. This season we have heard from at least two Balboa members that felt the two people in the Final Two had no business being there. Is it OK that the game has gotten so predictable that players who spawn whiffs of dominance are soon sent walking and those who generally sulk and pitter-patter around the shadows tend to make it through to the end, and actually win? Is it of any significance that the last “Sole Survivor,” Jenna, expressed a desire to her tribe mates that she wanted to leave the show because of a burdensome malaise?; or that one of the Final Two in the Pearl Islands, Lillian, whimpered to Burton that she too was close to checking out because of declining health and pining for family? What does “winning” mean anyway? It apparently has no more significance.
What made this ignoble “Finale” at all watchable was the barely containable glee I felt when Lillian was finally unmasked for the spurious, roguish contrarian she most accurately is. Looking backward a ways... of course it was the entire Morgan tribe that first passed judgment on ‘ol Lil, voting her out of the tribe nine days into the game. Her stunning return as an “Outcast” surely didn’t herald any expressive paeans---unlike the returning Burton to Drake. I’m sure the Morgans only saw a huge drag on their already burdened, staggering tribe. Andrew was unable to camouflage his sour distaste.
The next host Lillian leeched onto was Burton, her fellow “Outcast.” While promising to remain an auxiliary serf to Burton’s demands---so the “Outcasts” would be ultimately victorious---this itself became grating in that having this hack float about without any discernible mental, physical or practical talents---besides gushing and crying---soon became an irritant. During one Challenge in which Lillian congratulated Burton on their close win with hyperkinetic hysterics, he basically told her to bug-off. Burton soon chose Jon to fulfill Lillian’s role.
Jon also came to be a close ally. Naturally the supercilious Jon began to pick apart Lillian’s “naiveté” from the start but he put up with her tactless lip for strategic gain. Yet one must recall the stunned brooding that hung over Jon’s face as he became a spectator to Lillian’s emotional spasms when she began pouring over letters from home. He too had surely seen and heard quite enough.
When Lillian eventually selected Sandra as her Final Two accomplice, Sandra was grateful and feigned deference to Lillian’s position and decision; she muzzled her natural aggressiveness. This lasted all of a few minutes into the final Tribal Council when Sandra witnessed the moral evasiveness and ambiguity that hallmarked Lillian’s serial prevarication. Sandra shifted gears forthwith and never looked back---tearing Lillian’s vestal facade to tatters. With eyes now afire, she pointed out that everyone sitting in that jury pool had been voted out by Lillian---all the promises, alliances and friendships skewered. Lillian did a lot of blinking.
By this time the jury itself had it’s own bellyful of Lillian. The attacks rocketed unceasingly, most notably from Rupert and Christa (as well as Burton, Ryno and Jon). Rupert asked Lillian to name the one instance in which she was honest to him after drawing him into a supposedly lavish cocoon of kinship. Lillian could only blather about being honest when talking about family while they were taking ocean baths. Christa walked up and asked Lillian about her constant and effusive apologizing whenever she did “terrible” things like win a Challenge or vote somebody off. The stock answer was given... “I was Lillian Morris... that’s me,” amid barks of defensiveness. This was just after Tijuana asked the both of them to tell why the other didn’t deserve to win. As usual, Lillian leaned over to Sandra, placed a hand on her arm and said, “forgive me...” Sandra squirmed in her seat and told Lillian to just get on with it. Lillian let the jury in on some of her grave misgivings, asking Sandra rhetorically, “Do you have a mind of your own?” She was also concerned Sandra had been “riding coattails.” I’ll bet to this day Sandra wishes she had been more like ‘ol Lil, you know, not riding coattails and oozing independence. Egads. Coming from Lillian that was pretty foul. I guess that’s like having a “Love” for Rupert and then voting him off. Etc, etc, ad infinitum.
So, first Morgan, then Burton, Jon, Sandra, and the Jury---all finally having had quite enough, thank you, of this Lillian character. The gal who chose to flitter about in a Boy Scout Troop Leader uniform who didn’t even have the practical outdoorsy skills of a Rupert, the tribal sacrifice of an Andrew, or the moral (or immoral, as you will) straightness of a Johnny Fairplay. But all the time insisting, pleading that she did. That was her tableau.
When someone stands over you with a shotgun pointed at your head it is rather meaningless to you whether the person says “I’m sorry, forgive me” or “I’m gonna kill you.” The overriding, tantamount concern is if that person will pull the trigger. The “I’m sorry” doesn’t have a lot of ring to it when your head is shot off. The provocateur with the shotgun redeems himself only if he doesn’t discharge his weapon, if he makes the moral decision to withdraw his murderous fire. If he proceeds to kill---with either a smile and a loving quip, or with a scowl---he has lost his soul. Lillian, for all her yapping otherwise, fired the gun while smiling. The very worst option. This is the finale.
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