"Survivor" Flame-Out

After 10 years, and four times on the show, Boston Rob finally won the game of "Survivor" last night on CBS. We've never been fans of Rob, but the way the game played out this season, the jury didn't have any other choice than to vote for the veteran to finally win. Rob understood that if he took two other contestants to the finals with him who were even more hated than him, that he'd win, that's what he did, and he won.

A lot of people are saying Rob deserved to win, that the game is what it is, that nasty backstabbing is sometimes rewarded, and Rob does backstabbing better than anyone. But is it really playing the "best game" when the Yankees beat a high school baseball team, or when Roger Federer beats someone at Wimbledon who has one arm tied behind his back? In other words, the group of people who played this season's "Survivor" had to be some of the stupidest contestants we've ever seen on this show. They were so dumb, we're actually wondering if they're able to feed themselves in real life. So did Rob really play the best game, or did he luck out by being paired with the worst "Survivor" players of all time?

From the very beginning of the season, all the young, dumb, pretty ones on Rob's team fell under his spell and his promise to "take them to the finals". Would someone please, for the love of god, explain to these rocket scientists that going to the finals doesn't matter if you don't win in the end. Phillip, who is hands-down one of the craziest people we've ever seen on t.v., is practically beaming with pride that he "outplayed" his other contestants by making it to the finals; we're waiting for someone to explain to him that the people he "beat in the game" win just as much money as he does: bupkis. In "Survivor", whether you finish in 15th place or 2nd place, it doesn't matter, you still lose.

Here's the season in a nutshell. One team was older and smarter, and they knew to vote off their villain early on, the veteran Russell. But on the other side of the island, Rob's teammates were all very young, naive and incredibly stupid, and they not only believed all the horseshit that Rob was shoveling, they ate it up with a spoon and then asked for more. If you've ever wondered how Charles Manson was able to talk young people into committing murder for him in the 1960's, all you had to do was watch Rob manipulate his teammates and you'd understand. It all depends on finding people who haven't a brain in their heads. Anyway, the smarter team lost key challenges, putting them at a numbers disadvantage against Rob's team, and from that point on, Rob was in control of the entire game. Rob took the nutjob Phillip, and Natalie, his Squeaky Fromme, to the finals, knowing the jury wouldn't vote for them because all they did was "ride his coattails", and he was right. We're honestly wondering whether it has dawned, yet, on Natalie that she lost the game. Andrea, who was on Rob's team, was actually the best player of the game; she was the only one who really understood the game, and at times even tried to convince her teammates to do the right thing, but she had the unfortunate task of trying to talk sense into a bunch of people who had not only drunk the kool-aid, but kept pulling out the half-gallon drums to mix up a new batch.

Seriously, we love "Survivor", it's our favorite show on t.v. But this season had to be one of the last satisfying seasons ever of the show. The show's normal hallmarks of unexpected twists and turns were missing, mainly because of what we've previously described, one person told everyone else what to do, and they blindly did it. In every season, you always get one or two people who've never watched the show, and don't understand how to play, but the entire cast? We're wondering if CBS rigged the show's cast with the dumbest people they could find, just so a "t.v. favorite", Boston Rob, would do well? No one who's ever watched this show before would have kept Rob in the game; they should have realized that the only chance they had to win was to get rid of him early on. But they didn't.

The new twist on the show, "Redemption Island", in which contestants who were voted-off were allowed to win their way back into the game, was misused as well. In the entire course of the season, only twice did these contestants get to rejoin the game, and only one at a time. They should have used the "Redemption" option more often, and with more people. How much more interesting would it have been if three people who Rob voted off were allowed to return to his tribe, instead of one at a time? What good can one person do by him/herself against an entire tribe who's already voted that person off. The "Redemption" feature had absolutely no effect on the game, when it should have been a major player.

This one-off, really bad season of "Survivor" won't dissuade us from watching the show, after eleven years, it's still one of the most interesting things on t.v. But please, CBS producers, we're begging you, for the love of god and all that's true, please, please select some contestants for the next season who have at least a moderate I.Q. level and people who didn't study at the George W. Bush school of "strategery".