MONDO EXTRAS

Now, it's time for the part where Jeff beats the crap out of Lydia, as he did frequently throughout the season. "Lydia, I'm going to ask you the question that I asked you, bless your heart, at almost every tribal council." Aha. I believe it's "How worthless are you?" Jeff asks it a little differently, of course, phrasing it as, "How are you still in this game?" Jeff, come on, dude. Lill. Vecepia. Eliza. People have gone to F4 despite being fairly useless a lot of the time. I have no idea why Jeff seems to think this is a freak occurrence, or why it seems to offend him so much. It's like he was once beaten by a short-legged fishmonger and has been holding a grudge ever since. Lydia, still a good sport, says that she used her mom qualities -- nurturing and caring for people -- and says that she also functioned as a provider, providing food or a vote or a clean camp or a positive attitude, and this helped her stay in the game. The audience cheers, and Probst is forced to admit that "there's something to be said for that," as if he could deny it, what with the way she got to F4. The other contestants are also all cheering pretty enthusiastically, so I think they really do like her, and they're undoubtedly tired of seeing her as the Probst punching bag of the season. Jeff says again that Lydia did always maintain her positive attitude, and Lydia, failing to note when her segment is over, jumps in to add more, saying that she wants to tell the world that being positive and happy in your outlook can bring you...not that far from winning, I guess. You might not lose as soon as you think. Encouraging! Jeff throws it to a commercial, promising to talk to Bobby Jon and Steph after we come back.

After the break, we replay the weird moment when Bobby Jon and Steph emerged at the ruins, and then we come back to the reunion, where Jeff reminds those viewers who are watching the reunion special in spite of having seen none of the actual show all season that this inclusion of past survivors was the "twist." Jeff continues to insist, despite the total lack of evidence that this is the way anyone else analyzed the situation, that the other people had to decide whether it was better to keep those two because they had experience in the game, or to boot them because they were threats. So, Jeff says to Steph, knowing she came in as a target, how did that affect her strategy? Steph says that she didn't expect to get very far anyway, so she just wanted to get "sort of far." She says that she decided to take a leadership position, figuring she'd definitely be booted otherwise, and to get herself into a good alliance. Which, she points out, she did. Jeff asks about the fact that she was "sort of the sweetheart" in Palau, and says that it's a hard expectation to live up to. Steph bumbles the question by repeating what Jeff said, which results in her referring to herself as "America's sweetheart." Which you cannot do, unless you are sarcastically referring to your tendency to snap at people and swear, like I would be. Fuck you! I am America's Sweetheart! She says that, for Guatemala, she didn't want to come in seventh, so she knew she was going to have to go at the game hard. She also insists that there has been no abrupt change of personality -- she's the same person she was when she played the first time, even if people saw a different side of her on this occasion. She says that if you had two impressions of her, you'd have to smush them together to get a realistic understanding of who she really is. She insists that she's "a nice person," but that the game is full of difficult decisions.