Fantasy Survivor – Episode 12

We’ve reached the finals of this season of Survivor, and (spoiler, but if you were waiting for the end of my season recap to find out the winner, you’re weird) Maryanne took the crown. But I’m left with one question:

How do they learn to spell each other’s names?

I will grant that editing copy is my job, but it would kill me if I went on national TV and spent a whole season writing people’s names down and spelling them wrong. Wednesday night, we saw Lindsay get voted out 4-1 in the final five, and of her four votes, three spelled Lindsay wrong. If I’m ever on Survivor, the first day at camp I’m fashioning some pen or paint or stick-on-a-rock or something and having everyone write their names down and studying them every day. I might win Survivor, I might lose Survivor, but I’m not going to be a bad speller on Survivor.

Anyway, that was a surprisingly good season, with a winner I never dreamed could win from the beginning, and you can’t ask for much more than that. And now, on with our look at the season finale of Survivor 42.

Survivor 42 Episode 12 Recap

As is the standard for the finale, Probst introduces everything, including the fact that Mike and Maryanne both have idols. After the obligatory super-intense credits, we go to a debrief of the Omar eviction, including a “the producers are sadists” move to a new and unstocked camp.

Maryanne is celebrating her move to oust Omar, feeling like she has a good shot to make the end. Jonathan says it was always going to be Omar, which might be true, only Lindsay didn’t know and is like, “wait what?” I had a reputation as a super-nice guy in high school. There was always a kid in my homeroom every year who I just didn’t get along with, but I was nice to him. Then in tenth grade, I noticed on the class postings he wasn’t in my class, and I told my friend, “Finally I’m not with Brian!” Only … Brian heard me. I didn’t know he was there. There was no coming back from it, so I steered into the skid and was like “That’s right, I don’t like you.” I was a jerk. I feel bad about it. And it’s what Jonathan does here, because as soon as Lindsay calls him out, he doesn’t walk it back or apologize, he goes super-patronizing “You voted for me” over and over and over, even as she points out that his lying to her came first. It was a bad look, but he also didn’t really have an out. 

Romeo makes a very overt desperation move by claiming he has an idol so he’ll be safe at five because he’ll have to play it. It doesn’t seem like anyone believes him, despite him making a fake idol. Whatever, desperate is as desperate does.

Mike and Lindsay discuss whether she can get his idol, and he doesn’t promise, but he very blatantly doesn’t not-promise either. Then the tribe gets a hint at the immunity challenge, which requires them to solve a word scramble riddle and then use the hidden message to find an advantage for the challenge. And forgive the immodesty, but this would have been the most geared-for-me challenge ever. I’m bitter I didn’t get to compete.

And for whatever puzzle-solving virtues I have, the castaways do not, because Lindsay solves the puzzle, hunts for the clue, gets lost, almost give sup, and finally finds the advantage all while everyone else is struggling to unscramble “sleeping.” If her assessment is to be believed, she had 40-plus minutes of solo hunting, and might have had days given how much they all flamed out. (To be fair, Maryanne appears to sandbag her contributions a bit because she wants Lindsay to have the advantage.)

The immunity challenge is the annual ridiculously convoluted multi-station obstacle course, and it offers reward of a luxurious pasta dinner in addition to immunity, and let me just say — pasta? Some of the food rewards kind of worry me after however long of starvation, but I might actually cry at a pasta dinner at that point.

Anyway, Lindsay’s advantage is some ease at the knot-untying — everyone else has six knots to untie at each station, but she has only one. That’s a nice advantage, but also the Survivor knots are never very difficult. Still, better than not an advantage.

Lindsay drops a plank of a little homemade bridge part, setting her back just a little and giving Jonathan time to finish the obstacle course part before her, He flames out at the puzzle though, with Lindsay and Mike racing so far ahead of him that Jonathan legitimately stops working on the puzzle to just watch. It’s close throughout, but once Mike pulls ahead he never loses it and ultimately wins.

Here, I wondered about idol exchanging. I never once thought Mike would give Lindsay his idol, but I did briefly wonder about Maryanne giving hers to Lindsay, since no one was voting for Maryanne anyway. That proves to be a poor wonder for several reasons, some at the very end of the episode. (Also, it occurs to me around here that no one knows Maryanne has this idol, which is so rare on the show that it hadn’t even occurred to me.)

Mike selects Jonathan for food because Jonathan has been starved. He asks Probst to take someone else for food, and Probst is like “nope!”

After an ad for So Help Me Todd that shows CBS is making a “Skylar Astin is likable enough to carry a network show” bet that I don’t think it can cash, Mike and Jonathan celebrate food, and I think Jonathan loses his mind at the food, including the corniest friendship toast ever.

Jonathan asks Mike to play his idol for him, and Mike gives a very awkward pause before saying “Of course I will,” and man, Mike is many things, but a suave liar is not one of those things.

Lindsay is without choices, so she goes full guilt trip and tries to pity party Mike into giving her his idol. He claims he’ll think about it, but it doesn’t seem very believable.

Maryanne gives a going-to-tribal speech about the possibility of trying to get Lindsay or Jonathan out, then we have our Tribal Council where everyone discusses how Lindsay is on the outs. They vote, and then Mike plays his idol … for Maryanne. Weird choice of word to keep, but he did it. Then Romeo reveals his fake idol is fake, and everyone (jury included) is like “duh, we know.” Maryanne does not save Lindsay, which means Lindsay gets the aforementioned 4-1 vote and she’s out. 

I guess Maryanne’s desire to keep Lindsay around didn’t extend to saving her.

We come back immediately into the next immunity challenge, the now-so-common-it’s-routine “drop a ball into a marble run and catch it before it comes out.” Maryanne has a very winner-like breakdown before the challenge about her family, then they start the challenge, which normally appears to take a long time. This one? Does not. Mike drops within a minute or so, Maryanne drops at the second ball. We’re down to Jonathan and Romeo, which is the biggest physical mismatch since Sylvester and Tweety. And just like that matchup, this one goes to the underdog, as Jonathan drops and Romeo wins the most unlikely immunity of all time. I’m immediately excited to see the jury faces when Romeo entered in the necklace.

Back at camp, Romeo celebrates his win a bit too hard, but then he can’t have thought that would ever happen, so good for him. Mike pulls him aside and basically says “You gotta send me to make fire. If it’s me, I’d pit me against Maryanne, because you don’t want to go to Final Tribal against the two of us.” Which … is a good call, frankly. Jonathan is a cool guy with warts, but his Final Tribal would be unlikely to impress that many people.

At tribal, the jury faces at seeing Romeo in the necklace are indeed amazing and wonderful. Probst recaps the unlikelihood of Mike and Romeo winning immunities while desperately tiptoeing around straight-up saying “Ha, you guys are bad.”

Anyway, Romeo doesn’t do what Mike suggested. He sends Mike to make fire, but sends Jonathan with him, and they have a total bro-out moment about it. They both do fire well, getting flames going faster than most fire-makers in the last few seasons, but Mike really wrecks the challenge, taking his rope out before Jonathan has even gotten a little hint of victory. Jonathan is bitter, but not bitter at anyone, just regretful he failed.

(For the record, I take notes as I watch, and here’s verbatim what I wrote when Romeo chose Maryanne to go to Final Tribal: “Romeo takes Maryanne, Jonathan v. Mike making fire, good Bro showdown, and also Maryanne just won.” Her making the end was all I thought she needed.)

Jonathan uses his exit confessional to basically make his plea to play again, which feels a bit tacky, except for the fact that … they’ll cast that dude on every season from now to the end of time if they can, so whatever, shoot your shot, Jonathan.

Maryanne, Mike and Romeo have their big reminiscing time as the final three, but the show adds in some interview clips from the jury about each of them. It’s a nice segment with nothing really of note, though at one point Romeo says, “If you want to vote for who played the best game, give it to me,” and I might have laughed out loud.

Final Tribal

So let’s just do this in bullets, instead of a full recap. The highlights of the jury segment:

• Mike says his eviction of Rocksroy is the only time he broke his word, except that half the jury (most notably Hai) is like “Wait, dude, you backstabbed everyone.” Everyone just about gangs up on Mike until Drea steps in with, “Y’all, we all lied, it’s OK.” That ends with Mike wondering if maybe he wasn’t as honest and upright as he thought.
• Maryanne defends her play (particularly her attempt to fly under the radar) as intentional, because young strategists kept getting eliminated.
• Romeo’s best defense of his moves is that … he threw votes away for no real reason? I didn’t really get his point, and Hai didn’t either, because he immediately calls it out as nonsense. 
• Omar points out how Maryanne’s social game started out rough, and she agrees and says she figured it out as she went, and basically everyone agrees, and I was pretty sure Maryanne was winning originally, but here’s where I became positive.
• Jonathan quizzes Romeo on his most strategic move, and it comes down to an “I kept surviving by any means necessary” answer that very clearly does not impress Jonathan.
• They gets asked for their best physical contributions — Maryanne and Mike have good answers, Romeo has “I won that one immunity.” They get asked for their big strategic move — Maryanne and Mike have good answers, Romeo has “I made that fake idol that fooled no one. In Romeo’s defense, he has a good moment when asked about his personal evolution in the game that relates to his own experience coming out of the closet and issues a very genuine and nice thank you to Hai for helping him with that. Otherwise, this is not going well for Romeo.
• Maryanne cops to not only finding the final immunity idol, but keeping it secret and managing to keep it while getting Mike to play his for her and not saving Lindsay because of her threat level. Everyone is legitimately blown away.

They go to the vote, with Probst blowing everyone’s minds by reading the votes straight away in Fiji. Mike gets the first vote (from Jonathan). Maryanne gets … all the rest. She wins a million dollars. And for someone I all but dismissed for about the first half of the season, this was one of the more impressive wins on record.

If they play this season a hundred times, I have no idea how many times Maryanne would come out on top, but at the start of the season I would have said, “I don’t know, one? Maybe?” And at this point I think it would be an actually impressive number. She showed more growth over the course of the season than anyone in a while. Congratulations to her.