MONDO EXTRAS

And now, it's time to tease the Jon segment, which will undoubtedly be almost as endless as the Rupert segment. Oy. Jeff teases the segment in part by encouraging the audience to boo Jon, which they obediently do, because they don't get that they're just giving the nitwit what he wants. Nobody should boo. Jon's like any idiot -- you have to stop reacting, and then he'll go away. And he is, of course, doing the Fairplay Fingers again. So, so lame.

Back from commercials, the Jon segment opens with the moment when Jon explained the Fairplay Fingers to Jeff. The only good thing about that is that it takes me back to when Darrah told him how repugnant he was. And that was some good times. Back at the reunion when the clip is over, Jon not only continues the fingers, but sticks his tongue out. Didn't everyone else stop doing things like that in eleventh grade? The audience indulgently boos. Again. Shut up, audience. Jeff asks Jon whether being obnoxious was his plan from the beginning. "Well, if it wasn't, I sure did screw up!" Jon says heartily with a game smile. And this is where you learn that he hasn't got the heart for the villain role at all, because he's just not nearly funny enough. This is where you find out that without editors to cull his one remotely amusing comment per week and make him appear to be relentlessly snarky, he's just kind of a weak-ass putz. "I wanted to be the most hated Survivor of all time...and I think I did a pretty good job of it," he says with a totally inappropriate smile that isn't remotely villainous. It's just...needy. That's how Jon comes off through this entire special -- just terribly, terrifically needy. He and Rupert really are two sides of the same coin, and I'll give Rupert this: I certainly prefer Rupert's route to attention-mongering to Jon's route.

Jeff allows that they've established that Jon's a hated person. "Is that you?" Jeff continues. "If I see you on the street, are you that kind of...a jackass? Or, are you, in fact, putting this on?" What's great about this moment is that Jon visibly blanches at the word "jackass," as if he expects everyone to admit that, in reality, he's just awesome and fun, and he's actually surprised to hear a genuinely insulting word spoken about himself. Jeff, of course, has chewed up six or eight more interesting villains by now, so he really shouldn't be all that impressed by Jon, and I think that's what Jon is sensing. Trying to recover, Jon says, "I'm kinda nice, but...I'm an a-hole, pretty much." Jon doesn't get nearly the laugh he's looking for; it's just kind of a murmur of chortling in the audience. Jeff asks him what the hell "Jonny Fairplay" means, anyway. Is that from before, or is it made up specifically for the show? One of the greatest moments of this hour ensues, as Jon says, "I used to do wrestling stuff before Survivor, and, uh..." And this is where he gets the laugh he was trying for a second ago, which catches him off-guard, because that -- the idea of his scrawny ass having something to do with wrestling -- isn't the part he thought was funny. "Excuse us for laughing," Jeff says, not sorry at all. Jon gives a completely unfunny explanation of how he was a bad guy, so he called himself "Fairplay," because it was...you know, ironic. Get it? DO YOU? Jeff asks Jon about the reaction he gets on the street, and Jon says that people tell him they hate him, but then when he flips them off, they like it. Jeff says it doesn't sound like Jon's done a very good job getting true hating from people. Jon says that he just wants the guys to hate him. The women should love him. He gets a kind of horrified chuckle from the crowd that makes it pretty clear that the women in the room are not exactly thinking "heartthrob."