Survivor Gabon Finale: Bobbing for Eden's Apples

Survivor's 17th season is in the books. Some thoughts:

Although his opening speech wasn't bad, I otherwise was unimpressed with Bob's final Tribal Council performance. He seemingly had little to say and, far as we were shown, avoided giving the one answer that could have swung at least one more vote his way: That he did what he had to do. Why give Randy the fake idol? It kept him in the game. Why do everything Sugar told him to? It kept him in the game. When your alliance has fallen apart, pretty much all you can do is hitch a ride with anyone who's willing. And do what keeps you in the game.

As a result, Bob nearly lost to Susie, whose only real strategic move that we saw was siding with Crystal and Kenny to vote out Marcus before the merge. Granted, this decision spelled the end for the Onion Alliance's dominance. But Susie didn't engineer that move -- Crystal (and Kenny) convinced her to do it. Other than that, what did Susie do? Win the first and last individual immunity challenges. That's all.

So it's hard to say Susie deserved three votes, much less the money. Bob was more deserving than she was. Yes, I know he slept through some of the Onion alliance's strategy sessions. He was on the margins of the Onion alliance -- at one point, Corinne and company said they had secretly replaced him with Randy as their fifth wheel -- but managed to outlast the rest of them. Perhaps he was riding Sugar's coattails in the last few episodes, but he wasn't lacking for strategy since he initially planned to use his fake idol to try and save himself. His and Corinne's plan to get rid of Matty at the final seven -- by using a second fake idol to fake out Kenny and Crystal -- also came closer to working than it probably should have. And when it came down to it, the 57-year-old (by far Survivor's oldest winner) won immunity not once, not twice, but three times.

Yet based on what we were shown during the season, Sugar, perhaps even more than Kenny, was the key strategist. Kenny convinced her to vote out Ace (something Sugar came to regret). She was the swing vote again later when Charlie was dispatched. She got Bob to sell Randy on the hidden immunity idol plan. She engineered the ouster of Crystal (her supposed alliance partner) even giving Matty her cherished idol, then vanquished Kenny after convincing him he was safe. And most shocking of all, she forced a tie at the final four to let "fate" decide if Bob or Matty should go to the final three. (Apparently fate decided Bob should first practice starting a fire.)

In a nutshell: Sugar (and her vote) determined the course of the game. She was Gabon's central character. Back when Survivor had a final two, not a final three, fans often noted that the most deserving player -- be it Kathy from Marquesas or Rob from The Amazon -- often finished third. Weird as Sugar's decision-making was at times, methinks that may have been the case here, too. Bob wasn't an undeserving winner -- I was rooting for him myself in the end -- but Sugar made more things happen.

However, Sugar angered too many others, and lost in part because the jury voted with their hearts. Which is only appropriate given that Sugar's heart often determined her strategy.

Take all this with a grain of salt, though, because such reactions are based on the editing. And this season's editing was odd:

• Sugar was edited as an emotional, sweet and likeable young woman -- remember the sequence in that early episode where she mourned her father at Exile Island, then found the hidden immunity idol? But apparently no one really liked her.

• Early on, there seemed to be flashing neon signs around Marcus indicating he was the obvious winner. Ooops! Indeed, Marcus and Ace were the focal points of the pre-merge episodes. But neither lived to see the merge. That's what happens with power swings, I guess.

• Susie suddenly in the last hour became "too talkative." I think this personality trait might have been mentioned earlier, but I am not sure and in any case it seemed strange for the editors to suddenly spend precious finale minutes on Susie being annoyingly talkative and repeatedly saying "Oh, I can't believe I won immunity" when surely she must have been talkative the entire 39 days. I could see it if she *hadn't* won immunity and the editors wanted to show why players might vote her out, but given that she did win...

• Randy, whom no one outside his alliance apparently liked, received laughs and cheers from the audience at the Reunion Show on Sunday. Corinne, whom no out outside her alliance apparently liked, was roundly booed. Yet Randy surely had a more negative edit than Corinne on the show (Corinne even complained to Jeff Probst that she wasn't depicted as mean enough). What happened here? Corinne was portrayed as at least mildly friendly early on in the season, then became outright angry once her alliance was decimated. The topper, of course, was her singularly nasty comment to Sugar at the Final Tribal Council about Sugar's dead father. That, more than anything, earned Corinne those boos. Randy, meanwhile, was edited as mean all along. But it was a different kind of mean. It was an over-the-top, comical kind of mean. The fact that in his "boot episode," Randy purposely cranked up the nasty-meter, led to an impression that perhaps he was playing up his bad manners all along. In any case, this subtle difference between Corinne's and Randy's edits is, I think, responsible to some degree for the reaction both got Sunday night.

• Finally, Bob. Where was he in the early part of the game? Sleeping, apparently. We heard from him some in the opening episode, and he had the first pick for the dominant Kota Tribe, which he headed as the oldest male. But then he dropped off the radar. Granted, the editors can only work with what they've got. Clearly Bob's a quiet guy -- witness his silence Sunday night after winning an additional $100,000 in a separate contest based on viewer's votes for their favorite player.

But in terms of the season's narrative, Bob came back in a big way in Randy's boot episode. He gained audience empathy for his bad situation and approval for his genius recreation of an immunity idol. We even got a breathtaking aerial shot of him gazing down from a small mountain while on Exile Island. We've seen this sort of helicopter-shot footage at least twice before: The eventual final four of Africa -- Ethan, Kim, Lex and Tom -- climbed a mountain early in that season to take in the scenery, complete with purdy music and breathtaken commentary. The winner of Survivor Fiji, Earl, had a similar shot as well early in his victorious season. Given these two previous instances, I remember at the time thinking, gosh, that's a "winner's shot," but then dismissed it because how in the world could Bob possibly win?

Oh well.

That's all for now...more later this week, perhaps, with final thoughts on the season.