MONDO EXTRAS

Jeff turns his attention to poor, doomed Chiclets, asking her about her "quiet game" and her "subtle game," and how she then unexpectedly managed to win F3. Jeff tells her that he doesn't believe her on-air explanation that she chose Aras because Casaya would have seen choosing Terry as a slap in the face, Instead, Jeff insists that she must have picked the person she thought she could beat. I'm not sure those things are mutually exclusive, in that part of the "slap in the face" thing, at least to me, was that she knew the loyalty of her friends would do her no good if they thought she...you know, slapped them in the face. Chiclets, who I think admitted all along that she was looking for the person she could beat, says that she figured that everyone liked Terry, so she was hesitant to put herself up against him. She says that it was "fifty/fifty," and that she thinks Terry and Aras played the best -- but she was only "taking a shot" at the victory no matter how she decided. Asked whether she thinks that she could have beaten Terry, Chiclets says that she doesn't know, but thinks the going would have been "tough." Jeff takes one of his only marginally helpful after-the-fact polls, in which people who have now had the opportunity to (1) reflect; (2) see the whole show; and (3) talk endlessly with others are asked to say what they would have done before all of those things happened. I mean, it suggests what they would have done, but it's far from a certainty. The poll allegedly shows that against Terry, Chiclets again would have only gotten two votes: Cirie and Bruce. It does make some sense, since in all likelihood, Austin and Sally were committed to Terry, and Aras, Courtney, and Shane all disliked Chiclets (Aras's being the only one of those votes she might have actually gotten), so, like many of us suspected, it does appear that Chiclets was screwed, no matter whom she picked to take to F2. What she really did was decide which of the two guys would get the money. Jeff points out that Terry was "that close to a million dollars." More, more! Rub it in more!

Jeff asks Chiclets about the bond she had with Casaya because he wonders how she feels about learning that she couldn't even have won against someone who wasn't part of her supposedly loyal group. Jeff asks her whether Terry's apparent ability to beat her is a sign of respect for Terry or a sign that she fell out of favor with her own tribe. Chiclets says that she certainly lost favor with some people near the end more than Terry did, since he didn't participate in voting anyone out. That's very true, and it's why I'd like to think that if I were on a jury, I'd take that into account and not only consider what people did, but what they would have done if placed in each other's positions. Giving the money to the person who was too powerless to really do much doesn't strike me as the best possible way to vote. Chiclets says that since she and Aras voted out the same people, she thought that she might have a better shot against Aras. I think she's thinking correctly; it's just that she was screwed no matter what she did.