Brains over Brawn: Yul defeats Ozzy on Survivor

One of my (not-very) guilty pleasures is watching the reality television show Survivor. MadProfessah, like many other people, was disturbed and uneasy when CBS announced that for Survivor: Cook Islands the teams would be separated by race and ethnicity: Black, White, Asian and Latino. One, race is a social construct, so to arbitrarily select and segregate contestants into four "races" seemed to me as a potentially dangerous social experiment which could reinforce negative stereotypes based on racial classification. However, it did ensure I would watch this 13th edition of the now-hoary veteran of television sweeps, which wasn't a given after the disappointing Survivor: Panama.

In the end, Survivor did not end up precipitating a racial cataclysm, as 31-year old Yul Kwon, a management consultant from San Mateo, California with degrees from Stanford University and Yale Law School won the million dollar prize. However, the show was closely watched and commented on by racial minorities all over the blogosphere.

Even people who don't regularly watch television were interested in the results. A Korean friend of mine named Steven Lee called me seconds after the vote was announced on Sunday and said "Kimchi Power! Yul won Survivor!" First I was pissed off and hung up on him, since I hadn't seen the show and I was MOXI'ing it for viewing later in the week. But then I was interested as to how many other people had been following the Survivor storyline, particularly after the controversial racial segregation of the teams was ended and the season became just a regular edition of the show.

Interestingly, the show actually became even more compelling to watch, thanks to a clever gimmick which was revealed when there were only 12 contestants left evenly divided into two "tribes," Aitu and Raro. Contests had a thirty second opportunity to mutiny from one team to another. Ultimately, two white contestants, Candice (who deserted first) and Jonathan (who followed a few seconds later) left their majority-minority team of 2 Asian Americans, 1 Latino male and 1 African American female (Yul, Becky, Ozzy and Sundra) to join their original white team members Adam and Parvati. This skewed the balance of power to 8 Raro members to 4 Aitu members which insured that if any merge of teams occurred, Raro would have the numbers to eliminate the Aitu team one-be-one. Amazingly, the team with four minority individuals competing with absolutely everything to lose proceeded to beat the Raro team in consecutive immunity challenges, especially a crucial one in which a surprising two members were voted out at a tribal council instead of one. This led to the merge to form Aitutonga occurring when 9 contestants were left, with 5 former Raro members (4 white members and one Black male) and 4 former Aitu members.

This should have been the end of the story for the former Aitu tribe except that Yul had found the "immunity idol" which gave him the power that if he ended up with the most votes for elimination at tribal council the person getting the next highest vote tally would be sent home instead. Amazingly, Yul showed the immunity idol to the obstreperous and conniving Jonathan, who being generationally removed from his younger, lazier tribemates was inclined to doublecross his new tribemates for the old tribemates he had previously deserted during the now-infamous mutiny. Jonathan was convinced he would go further with the successful Aitu alliance and votes with them to eliminate African American male Nate. This left the Aitutonga with equal numbers from the former tribes: four (white) former Raro members versus the multicultural former Aitu members. Ozzy continued to physically dominate every immunity challenge and the Aitu alliance eliminated the traitorous Candice followed by the untrustworthy Jonathan. The pulchritudinous Parvati and Adam quickly followed and the Final Four consisted of the original Aitu members, one of the most improbable events in Survivor history. They had eliminated all 8 members of the opposing Raro team following the infamous mutiny way back in episode 8.

After another twist in which it is revealed the Final Tribal Council to decide who gets the 1 million dollar check will involve three contestants instead of the usual two, there is a tiebreaker (fire making) between Becky and Sundra which African American female Sundra loses.

In the final voting the jury (which consists of the last 9 people voted out of the game, i.e. the entire Raro team and Sundra) split almost evenly with 5 voting to award it to Yul who had been the clear Mastermind behind the game and 4 voting for Ozzy who had physically dominated the game like no one else since Colby in Survivor: Outback. Becky deservedly received no votes. Interestingly, 3 of the 4 white members of the jury voted for Yul. Asian Americans split their votes (I'm not clear as to why Asian American Jenny felt that she should vote for Ozzy instead of her former team member Yul). 2 of the 3 African Americans voted for the Latino finalist over the Asian one (with Sundra voting for Yul and Nate and Rebecca voting for Ozzy). There were no Latino members of the jury, which may have also been the reason why Ozzy lost. All in all it was an excellent season, I really don't know what the producers of Survivor can do to make the next one as remotely interesting or entertaining as Survivor: Cook Islands was.

GRADE: A-.