The Shape of Days

This is my weekly recap of “Survivor: Palau.” It tells you all sorts of secrets, including who wins. To protect you from scary spoilers, the article is hidden out of sight on the other side of the jump.

Nobody remembers exactly when the phrase first emerged, who first used it, who gets the credit for coining the term. Whatever the origin, the last four players in the game have always been referred to in capital letters: the Final Four.

But it’s a dubious honor at best. Yes, making it to the Final Four is an accomplishment. It’s a hell of an accomplishment. But it’s also a sign that the task ahead is at least as daunting as the one that lies behind. There are those avid fans of the game who can name the first-place winners from all nine “Survivor” seasons. There are even those who can name all the runners-up.

But can anybody remember who came in fourth?

We’re down to the Final Four. But we’ve got a long, long way yet to go.

For Jenn, the journey that lies ahead is going to be the hardest of all. With no allies left and no cards to play, her role as the tribe’s designated sacrificial lamb seems assured. But in this game the sacrificial lamb when cornered has a way of turning into a shark with a gun for a mouth, so don’t count her out just yet.

Tom, de facto leader of the Koror tribe since day one, suddenly finds himself on the outside, wondering how well his alliance with Ian will hold up when the Final Four become the Final Three.

And what about Ian? He distinguished himself in the first minutes of the first day, winning the race to the beach to claim one of the two immunity necklaces that meant safety from the first, unceremonious round of cuts. Ever since he’s managed to hide in Tom’s shadow, letting the older man act as his lightning rod as he waited for his moment. Has he waited too long, or is he still biding his time?

And that leaves Katie. She’s the cypher, the game’s one unquantifiable quantity. By all rights, she shouldn’t even be here. But the nine “Survivor” champions from seasons past all share one, and only one, characteristic in common: They were all, at one point or another, underestimated by absolutely everybody.

Could Katie be the one? Could she be this season’s spoiler? Thirty-seven days ago when the game began I would have said no, no way, not a chance. But now it’s apparent that she’s playing the long game, at least at the moment. “Caryn did me a huge favor last night,” she says, referring to the way misspelled attorney Caryn came unglued at the last tribal council. Caryn only told her part of the story, of course, but by the time she’d had her say, both Ian and Tom ended up looking like complete asses in front of the jury, leaving poor Katie sitting there playing the victim. Even Ian knows it: “My stock in the jury has gone down,” he says, abusing the figure of speech a little but getting the underlying fact exactly right.

Ian tries to look on the bright side of things: “Right now, I’m not the biggest target. Tom is.” He’s got a point here. If you’re going to be hated, at least make sure that there’s somebody nearby who’s hated just slightly more than you are.

Suddenly the air above the camp is full of the screams of the women. “Oh, my God, help us!” Katie cries from somewhere off down the beach. Both Tom and Ian freeze, hesitating shamefully; it’s a good thing the jury won’t get to see this tape before they vote. Finally, after thinking about it for a really long time — the words “final two” can be seen on both of their faces for a long moment — they drop what they’re doing and sprint off to help.

The girls, naturally, are just having a hissy-fit. They arrived at the tribe’s “tree-mail” box to find it completely full to the brim with food: eggs, bacon, bread, pancake mix, fresh fruit and a bottle of what looks to be champagne.

Every silver lining has a dark cloud hanging over it, though; the food comes with a badly written poem. Blah blah eat, blah blah energy, blah blah three days to go. Et cetera, et cetera. The two men and two women forgive the poem’s obvious shortcomings and let out enthusiastic whoops that echo through the jungle and scare the rats.

“There have been no gimmes in this game,” Tom says. “You fight for what you get. So to just get something today for nothing, just for making Final Four, it was just like an ‘atta boy.’ That’s what we’d call it in the firehouse: You got an ‘atta boy.’”

Then comes the eating, and it’s almost pornographic. These four really enjoy their breakfast. Tom does things to a piece of bacon that … well, I’ve never seen them before.

Breakfast represents a truce of sorts, a sort of momentary detente in what has become a very serious game over the past five weeks. Katie sums it up: “It’s gonna be someone’s last night here on Rat Island.”

Katie, Jenn and Ian relax in the hut after breakfast, relax and conspire. “If any of us win it,” she says in a low voice, referring to individual immunity, “we’re all good, right?” Ian is who she’s really asking, and he replies in the affirmative. “You sure about that?” Katie asks him. He says something about how he’s at that point in the game and it’s his best bet. Will he actually vote for Tom? Will he really throw his buddy under the bus at this stage in the game? Only Ian knows for sure at this point, and it’s not even completely clear whether Ian knows. “I win the challenge, Tom goes home,” he tells us privately. “I don’t win the challenge, Tom’s all of a sudden my best friend again.”

Well, he’s pragmatic if nothing else.

It’s time for that challenge, and it’s a big one. Like physically large, as in there’s a very large apparatus of some kind erected in the middle of a clearing in the jungle. It’s the size of a small building. Sitting in its shadow is some car or something. Probst drops the name, but since Chevrolet didn’t send me a big, fat product-placement check, I will abstain from being their pimp.

Probst tells the players to check out the car, and they do, piling into the front seat. “The winner of today’s challenge,” Probst declares, “does not win this car.” Everybody laughs. I think it’d be funny at this point if Probst just turns it into a pure car commercial with no relationship whatsoever to the game, but that’s not what happens. Instead, he says that the car goes to the winner of the game. “The other thing the winner of ‘Survivor’ wins is represented in the glove box,” Probst says. Jenn pops the glove box opens and extracts a blank check for one million dollars.

Shockingly, none of the contestants grabs it and runs. I know, I don’t get it either. Easy money. Fools.

Melodrama dispensed with, Probst tells the kids to get in line and begins the business of executing the challenge. And the challenge is … sigh … an obstacle course. Run the course, collect a series of keys, use the keys to unlock a series of padlocks. Begin climbing the structure, untie ropes, climb to the third level, use a grappling hook to retrieve rungs of a ladder, climb the ladder to the top. The first two players to the top will race down a zip-line, unlock a combination lock and raise a flag.

Seriously, this is just getting ridiculous. The problem with challenges like these, apart from their utter stupidity, is that they’re as much about plain dumb luck as they are about skill or desire. The person who wins this course isn’t going to be the one who wants it the most. He’s going to be the one who lucks out.

Anyway, ready-set-go. Jenn takes a early lead, but the boys soon catch up. Katie brings up the rear. Jenn and Ian get into a little bit of a tangle while Tom builds a decent head start.

At this point, Probst says something interesting. “Katie,” he observes as he watches her take her sweet time through the first leg of the course, “is either very worn out or not worried at all.” Katie just grins and discloses nothing.

Tom makes it to the second level of the tower first, followed very closely by Ian. Tom works his way through the obstacle — some ropes that serve absolutely no purpose that must be untied — first and starts using his grappling hook to retrieve rungs and build his ladder. He hooks his four rungs with aplomb; Ian is equally adept but slower. Jenn is a complete disaster with the grappling hook.

Ian retrieves all of his rungs and constructs his ladder. He makes it to the top in second place. The first half of the challenge is over.

Just to review, the next part of the challenge is to race down a zip-line — one of those lines that’s strung between two structures that you have to traverse by swinging — and unlocking a combination lock. It’s an even start. Probst gives the “go” and the boys race to the bottom. They retrieve the parts of their combinations and race back. Tom emerges from the water first, solves his combination, opens his lock. Tom wins immunity.

I guess Tom and Ian are best friends again.

Ian confirms this, more or less, by saying that he had deliberated over and over whether to send Tom or Jenn home if he’d won the immunity challenge. Since he didn’t, he says, “Jenn goes home tonight.”

But Jenn isn’t going to go home without a fight. She approaches Tom and gets him to consider the idea of voting for Ian. Tom shuts this idea down unequivocally. “My deal with Ian was to play against everybody together and then leave it at the end and fight it toe-to-toe in the final round. And I’m not there yet. We’re not in the final round. I can’t turn on him, Jenn.”

At that moment, remarkably, Ian and Katie walk up. Tom doesn’t even try to lie about their conversation. “I’m just telling Jenn that, in spite of how tempting it is to cut you loose and let you fly tonight, I can’t do it. I won’t do it. Because of the bond that we’ve made.”

And you know what? That’s pretty much it. Jenn accepts the decision. She gives Tom a hug. “It has been a pleasure and an honor,” he says. She begins to cry, hugs Katie. Everybody’s got lumps in their throats. Ian hugs Jenn. Everybody cries, laughs, cries some more.

Right now, given what he went through with his deliberation, Ian’s gotta be feeling about two inches tall.

Sometime later, Jenn’s off, I dunno, crying by herself or something. Ian, Katie and Tom are sitting around their table drinking the last of the coffee from the breakfast feast. “You guys are happy,” Tom says, “I’m sad. I think I just made a decision that might have cost me a million dollars.” He laughs when he says it, but we know it’s true.

“If I’d won immunity today, it would have been a really difficult decision for me, too, Tom,” Ian says.

While the three were talking, the sun has sunk lower and lower toward the horizon, finally disappearing completely. It’s long past time for them to leave for tribal council. Something is keeping them there, and I think we all know what it is.

A few minutes later we hear from Tom, “I thought we were rock-solid. When he said that, I was like, ‘Maybe he wouldn’t have chosen me.’ Makes me think.”

It makes him do more than think. It makes him go to Jenn. Jenn practically dances with glee. Seriously, we can see her visibly restraining herself from dancing with glee. “He said if you would have lost tonight, you would have been gone!” Jenn says. “Who did he say that to?” Tom asks. “Me!” Jenn replies. “Us!” She sees the look on Tom’s face, puts a hand on his shoulder in an open mockery of his hurt feelings. “Oh, I’m sorry you didn’t know,” she says, “but that was the deal.”

Tom, ever the decisive one, says, “Let’s talk to him right now.” And off they go.

“Ian!” Tom calls when he gets within range of the hut. “My friend, come talk to me.” There’s something about his tone of voice that makes my testicles retract into my belly. Things start out okay, kind of. Tom tells Ian how he feels, that he felt like he was making an easy decision and the fact that Ian thinks it would have been a hard decision makes him question Ian’s loyalty. “A lot of things are said in the game,” Ian says, and this seems to placate Tom briefly.

But then Jenn digs a fingernail in. “What did you say to Katie, though? About if Tom lost immunity?” Ian gets understandably defensive. “I’m playing the game, just like everybody else!” he says. Jenn backs down, but the damage is done. “What did you say?” asks Tom, not making eye contact with Ian. “Tell me what you said.”

Ian tells him.

Tom says nothing.

“But, Tom …” Ian begins.

“Okay,” Tom says, holding up a hand. “That’s all I needed to know.”

And that’s the end of the conversation.

The tribe arrives sometime later at tribal council, and Ian looks haunted. Seriously, he looks like he’s about to be sick. Probst brings in the jury, conducts the business of calling the meeting to order, then gives the foursome a look that’s … well, it’s almost sympathetic. His opening question is uncharacteristically gentle. “Here’s what I know,” he says. “Tribal council usually starts right about sundown. We are way past sundown. Which tells me something was going on back at camp. Tom, fill me in?”

Tom says that the immunity challenge was tough, but that he didn’t feel too stressed about it because he thought his alliance with Ian was solid. “Meaning even if you don’t win immunity and Ian does,” Probst says, “he’s got your back and so you’re fine?” Tom answers carefully. “So I thought,” he says.

Then Tom tells the story about what happened back at camp. The whole story, from the revealing conversation over coffee to the walk down the beach to Jenn’s desperate play to his confrontation with Ian.

Ian’s contribution is characteristically humble. “I want to say this just in case I do leave tonight,” he says. “Tom and I went so far as to make this gentleman’s agreement that said we would try to take each other to the final three.” Tom furrows his brow at this. Ian goes on to say that he didn’t really intend to vote Tom out, but simply told the girls that in order to keep them close to him.

Probst, who can always be counted upon, asks the damning question. “Did at any point you go to your strongest ally?” he asks. “Absolutely!” Ian says. “So why is this a surprise?” Probst asks Tom. “He didn’t tell me that,” Tom replies. Then he enumerates Ian’s offenses against him: There was the thing about having to make a difficult decision, there was the thing about not telling him about his, Ian’s, talk with Katie and Jenn. And the third strike, Tom says, is that Ian said they had agreed to try to take each other to the final three. “We didn’t say we would try,” Tom says.

Ian backs off of his earlier slip of the tongue immediately, then announces that he’s “flabbergasted” — great word, Ian is now officially my favorite to win — that Tom is reluctant to take his word against Jenn’s, somebody who came to him “in the eleventh hour.”

“It’s not Jenn’s word I’m listening to. It’s your words I’m listening to.”

Ian then says, like over and over again that it was his intention all along to go to the final three with Tom and Katie. Seriously, he protests a lot.

“What’s really interesting,” Probst observes, having shoved that sensitive stuff right out the window and gotten back to his usual self, “is the looks on everybody’s faces. Tom looks angry, Katie looks hurt and Jenn looks delighted.”

Jenn doesn’t deny it, but she tries to spin it toward some kind of nebulous idea of the public good. “People need to hear these things,” she says. By which she means, “People need to hear these things so that when I somehow, against all odds, make it to the finals, they will vote for me instead of one of these three schmucks.” Courtesy translation at no extra charge.

“Katie,” Probst asks, “why are you so pained by this?” Katie says that Ian is concerned about what Tom thinks but doesn’t seem to be concerned about what she thinks. Ian says that he’s only talking about Tom because that’s how the conversation was going when they left for tribal council. Katie speaks slowly and distinctly as if talking to a mildly retarded child. “Tom seems pissed. He might your name down. And if he does … ?” She throws her arms open. “I go home,” Ian says, putting on a brave front. “Not necessarily!” Katie exclaims. She accuses Ian of not even considering the possibility that she might vote for Jenn. “That’s not true,” Ian replies, realizing with shock that it’s perfectly true.

I think it’s worth noting at this point that this tribal council has taken on a qualitatively different character than any other before. Normally Probst is very careful to keep the situation under strict control, to make sure the players address him and not each other, to keep tempers below the boiling point. But he’s also a game-show host, and he knows good TV when he sees it. And this is it.

“I just have one question,” Katie says. “Have you lied to me in the last twenty-four hours?”

Ian makes a fatal, end-of-the-world mistake. He repeats the question. “Have I lied to you in the past twenty-four hours?” he says. “No.”

Katie folds her hands in her lap and nods. She knows better.

Of course, only we know the truth here. Ian really hasn’t lied to Katie in the past twenty-four hours. He has, however, lied to Tom repeatedly.

Ian is toast.

“Everybody have all the information they need?” Prost asks sardonically. Nobody says anything.

And then comes the voting. Jenn, Tom, Ian and Katie, in that order. Probst reads the ballots. They are remarkable. The votes come up Ian, Jenn, Ian, Jenn. It’s a tie.

The procedure for breaking a tie is well established, up to a point. There’s another round of voting; Ian and Jenn are exempt. If neither Tom nor Katie flips — or if both of them do, which is a distinct possibility — there will be some kind of tie-breaker. This tie-breaker is a complete mystery at this point in the game. In the past various methods have been used, ranging from counting up votes accumulated at past tribal councils to the decidedly horrific method of drawing colored stones out of a bag. Nobody wants to go to a tie-breaker.

Except me, of course. Remember: Their pain is my entertainment.

Katie and Tom vote a second time. Neither of them look happy. This, of course, makes me very happy. Probst reads the ballots. First vote comes up for Jenn; second vote comes up Ian.

The tribe is deadlocked. There’s going to be a tie-breaker.

Probst comes out with some nonsense about how the fact that there are only three players who don’t have immunity means that they can’t use the pick-a-rock tie-breaker. Instead, he says that Jenn and Ian will “take part in a tie-breaker challenge involving fire.” Jenn blanches. Ian grins. Over in the jury box, Steph grins too; she’s been here before.

The scenario is exactly like the Steph/Bobby Jon challenge. The first person to build a fire high enough to light a string wins. Probst gives the ready-set-go, and Ian wins it in less than a minute. It’s not even a contest. Ian earns his spot in the final three.

The business of removing Jenn from the game is conducted swiftly and with only perfunctory ritual. Probst dismisses the tribe and sends them home to what’s sure to be a very uncomfortable night at camp.

Appropriately, Ian gets the fire started. As he feeds it, Tom comes up behind him and starts asking oblique questions. “What do you want me to tell you?” Ian demands. “Tell me the truth,” Tom says. “You weren’t going with me to the final three to duke it out like men.”

“That is not the truth,” Ian replies punching each word forcefully.

“Now I’m supposed to buy the fact that, just prior to my winning immunity, you’d made up your mind to do the right thing?” Tom asks. “Not after I won. Not after I won the immunity.” Ian is adamant: “No!”

“Come on,” Tom says. “You are, like, the worst liar. It’s all out now. It’s all been said.”

Ian begins to protest … but then Katie turns on him. Et tu, Brute? “That really sucks,” she says. “Tom’s been sticking up for you this whole time.”

Ian buries his face in his hands.

His very best defense backfires on him. “We’re playing a game!” he says with hands thrown open as if that explains everything. “We’re playing a game!”

“We,” Tom says very slowly, “thought we were all playing the game together.”

“You’re crucifying me for a decision that I didn’t even make,” Ian says despondently. “You didn’t have the chance,” Tom replies. “You had the immunity necklace, I’m home taking a shower right now.”

The inquisition continues, long past the point where we, the audience at home, would have expected it to stop. “I’m telling you what was going through my mind and my heart and my soul,” Ian says. “Oh,” Tom says mockingly as he walks in a slow circle around the fire. “It’s your soul that’s speaking to us now.” Tom and Katie double-team Ian for a while, and they are merciless. Tom’s showing us a side of himself we’ve never seen before, not even in glimpses. “Why don’t you just say ‘Hey, I’m playing a game, I’m making double deals everywhere, and I got caught.’ Why can’t you say that?” Katie asks. “That’s kind of refreshing,” Tom says. “Actually you can borrow that speech. That was a good one.”

“You slipped tonight,” Tom says, “and you blew it.”

The next morning finds Ian in tears. “Last night was probably one of the worst nights of my life,” he says. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

Katie comes out of the hut wrapped in a blanket. She seems to possess that curious ability to act, the next morning, as if nothing happened the night before. “You didn’t have to sleep out here,” she says conversationally, almost sympathetically. It makes me wonder how much of last night’s verbal assault was sincere and how much was about getting Tom mad at Ian to improve her own chances in the game.

“What are you going to do today?” Katie asks in a small voice. “No idea,” Ian replies. “You gonna fight?” Ian thinks, says, “I’m not ready to,” with a shrug. A beat. “Well, I think you should,” Katie says. Let us not forget that twice last night, even when faced with the possibility of going home herself at the whim of a mercurial tie-breaker, she wrote down Jenn’s name instead of Ian’s. “Especially,” Katie says without even a hint of irony, “because then you should pick me.”

“That was my intention in the first place,” Ian says with only an echo of last night’s defensiveness. “I’d like to believe that,” Katie says, and for a moment we believe that she really would.

Whether Ian chooses to fight or not is entirely up to him. What he can’t do, though, is sit on his ass all day. He hikes out to the tribe’s “tree-mail” box and returns bearing the very last badly written poem to be delivered in the island nation of Palau. That’s not actually written by native Palauans, I mean.

Ian returns to camp with the “tree-mail” and reads it aloud. It contains instructions for what has become a “Survivor” tradition, that part of the finale that we can reasonably christen the “hymn to the fallen.” The three will paddle out to a rock island with a natural arch formation where they will find fifteen torches, one for each of the players who didn’t make it this far. (The two players who were eliminated during the dividing of the tribes don’t even get torches. They’re just non-people. Kind of a rip, in a way, but then again Wacky Wanda is among them, so it’s okay.)

The players take the torches and bury them at sea, reminiscing about them along the way. Jolanda, Ashlee, Jeff, Kim, Willard, Starbuck, James, Ibrehem, Bobby Jon, Coby, Janu, Steph, Gregg, Caryn, Jenn. The three’s kind words about the Ulongers ring hollow considering that they barely knew them. But the words are kind anyway, and that’s what counts. The music swells, there are lots of slow-motion hero shots, and that’s what this part of the grand finale is all about.

Which means it’s incredibly boring. We’re skiping ahead.

It’s time for the last challenge of the game. The final battle for immunity is always an endurance test. This time is no different. Each player will climb onto a buoy barefoot and wait. The last person standing wins. Simple, fair, inevitable.

Ready-set-go.

Probst opens the challenge with some lighthearted chit-chat, but that quickly falls away as the players sink deep into their own heads. The first hour of the challenge passes. Probst asks the players what they’re thinking about. Katie says she’s thinking about winning immunity; Katie is not big on imagination. Ian says that last night was rough and leaves it at that. Tom looks over at Ian, but keeps his own council.

After two hours, the wind begins to blow. Ian’s buoy heels hard over, ten degrees, twenty, twenty-five degrees off the vertical. Then comes the thunder. After three hours and twenty minutes, the rain begins to fall. None of the players show any overt signs of fatigue, though Ian does open his mouth and catch a raindrop on his tongue.

Probst asks Tom if the rain is going to make the challenge more difficult. “Not as difficult as sun would be,” he replies. As if on cue, the rain stops and the sun comes out. By the time four hours have elapsed, the sun is bearing down on them both from above and reflected from the surface of the water below. It’s like an oven.

Four hours becomes five. The sun, beating down on the players so brutally before, sets. Katie, who’s been visibly in pain since the rain stopped, steps gingerly off her buoy and drops out of the challenge. Only Ian and Tom are left, and each of these two would be crazy to quit.

Probst asks Tom what’s hurting. “Everything’s numb from the knees down,” he replies. Ian gets the same question. He doesn’t answer for a second, and the possibility dances through my mind that he might be asleep. Even feigning it would be the ultimate mind-job on Tom, but he doesn’t go there. “I feel pretty good,” he replies, and he actually looks like he does. Every muscle is relaxed.

Five hours becomes six. Katie lies down on the platform under Tom’s tee shirt — a tee shirt that hasn’t seen soap in five weeks, it bears mentioning — and goes to sleep. Six hours becomes seven. Seven becomes eight.

Probst: “I’m amazed that we have been out here eight hours.” Ian, vaguely hysterically: “Woo hoo!” Probst: “There hasn’t been one word spoken in the past” — he checks his watch — “four and a half. And never once has even the notion of a deal come up.”

Tom plays it cool. “Why? You got a pizza?” Probst just shrugs. “I’m just getting warmed up,” Ian says, and we believe him. We really do.

Tom, for his part, takes Probst’s idea and runs with it. He calls out to Ian, “If I beat you at this event, I’m taking Katie to the final.” This seems like a pretty bizarre deal to me, until Tom finishes, “If you step off that perch, I’m taking you.”

Ian doesn’t even hesitate. “Okay, I won’t step off the perch.” Katie, having heard her name, sits up. Tom goads Ian openly. “You’re not afraid of going to tribal council against me? All your persuasive language skills?” Ian laughs. “Tell you what,” he says. “You jump first, we have a deal.”

“Come on, Ian,” Tom says. “I’m not gonna go out on your terms!” Ian replies. “Step down and pay for your college loans,” Tom says. “A hundred thousand dollars is not chump change!” He’s referring to the hundred-thousand-dollar prize awarded to the runner-up. “I thought you wanted to duke it out, Tom,” Ian says. He’s talking tough, but he’s visibly hurting now. A few hours ago he was the picture of relaxed calm. Now he’s moving around a lot. One false move and he could lose his balance and fall.

“If I don’t step down,” Ian says, “I’m gonna beat you.” Tom’s answer is immediate: “That’s why I can’t step down.”

You’re not gonna believe this. Eight hours becomes nine. Nine becomes ten. Ten becomes eleven, almost twelve. Neither Tom or Ian has moved. Probst is tapping his foot impatiently. I have to wonder if Probst has waited out there this whole time, or if he’s spent the past eleven hours and forty-five minutes in his trailer back on the beach. I prefer to think that he’s been waiting there, bored out of his skull, since mid-morning.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Ian speaks: “Okay, I have a solution,” he says. “As you know, I’ve had an interesting day. I’ll go now, and you take Katie. And I’ll give up the million to get back you guys’ friendship.”

Probst has been dozing; he needs to go over this again. “You will step down,” he says slowly, “if he doesn’t take you but instead takes Katie as a way to show that you do care about these guys.” Ian nods, says “Yup” over and over again. “You would do that?” Tom asks. Ian says “Yup” again.

Probst: “Just to be clear, Tom has been offering to take you and give you a shot. That doesn’t sound as good as taking back your integrity and giving up any chance. And giving somebody who’s been out of this challenge now for ten hours a shot.”

Ian says, “I’ve thought about for the past twenty-four hours how to reconcile my differences. My hole gets deeper and deeper. I can’t leave this game with that on my shoulders. So I will dive right now if you take Katie.”

Tom says nothing.

Ian goes on. “I said all along that friendship was more important,” he says. “The longer we sit up here, the more I feel like I traded that and I traded in myself. So … yeah, I’ll do it.”

Probst asks Tom if it would do the trick. “Without a doubt,” Tom says immediately. “Ian would have my friendship after this game anyway. But he wins my respect back.”

And just like that, Ian jumps. When he comes back to the surface, he’s got a smile on his face.

The two men pull themselves out of the water and embrace as Probst reaches for the immunity necklace. “I was about to fall off too,” Tom says. With a careless gesture, Ian laughs and pushes Tom into the water as Probst looks on, a grin a mile wide across his face.

Ian and Katie hug for a long, long time.

Probst puts the necklace around Tom’s neck, then takes a step back and asks, “Is there any reason we shouldn’t hold tribal council right now?” Translation: “We’re now a full day behind on the production schedule. You guys are killing me. Give me a break here, huh?” Tom says, “I’m gonna ask Ian one more time, because I think we’re both a little punchy and delirious. Are you taking yourself out? Do you want me to hold to that?” Ian gives the only answer he can give: “We made a deal,” he says.

Probst improvises expertly. “Give me a verbal vote,” he says to Tom. “Who are you voting out of this game tonight?”

Tom looks down, at the necklace around his neck. He thinks for a moment about why he’s wearing it. When he speaks, his voice is filled with emotion. “I’m gonna vote out my buddy Ian,” he says. “As bad as I felt last night … I feel ten times better, and … he’s a hell of a guy. And … I respect him.”

Ian looks like he just won the million-dollar prize.

Tom and Katie row away to spend what is technically their last night on the island, even though they’ve only got a few hours before sunrise.

The next morning, the two predictably sleep in. When they finally drag themselves out of bed, Tom wisecracks, “I’m gonna tell you a dream I had, and you tell me your dream, and let’s find out if it really happened.”

The morning is peaceful, picturesque. The last two players bathe, relax, then ritualistically burn their picnic table. “No other tribe or family will gather around this table,” Tom says with great emotion. “It fed our family. That’s enough.”

Katie takes a moment to reflect on the past thirty-eight days. “I played this game in a different way than Tom,” she says, “but just as hard.” Surely she doesn’t actually believe this, does she? “There’s a scary beast in there, inside Tom. He’s threatening, he’s intimidating. I once again will be candid and let the jury know what Tom has been up to.” Ah. That’s what she means by “just as hard.” She means she’s more than willing to try to use the jury against Tom. I can’t really blame her for this … but then again, there’s no doubt in my mind at this point about who deserves to win this game.

The two pack whatever they want to take with them and load their canoe, paddling off to their last tribal council. We hear last thoughts from both players. “I hope I get some credit for the way I’ve played this game,” Katie says, “and the choices that I’ve made.” Tom says, “Whatever I did got me to where I am right now, and so be it. Now it’s in their hands.”

Katie and Tom arrive at tribal council and for the first time they see their jury assembled together: Coby, Janu, Steph, Gregg, Caryn, Jenn and Ian who looks about ten years younger with a shave.

Probst gives his speech about the shift of power, about how the jury will decide who wins. Then he explains the rules of the game: There will be opening statements, then the jurors will have a chance to address each of the remaining players. After that, the players will each get a closing statement. Tom speaks first.

“I don’t sit here pretending I deserve this seat any more than you do,” he says. “It’s been an honor, and I cherish you people for going through this experience with me.”

Katie’s words come next. “The whole goal of this game is self-preservation, and that’s what I’ve done.” She goes on: “I’m sure a lot of you are probably thinking, ‘Yeah, she skated by, she aligned herself with two really strong people.’ Well, that’s the game. That’s exactly what I did.”

And then, just like that, it’s time for Coby to take center stage again. And God, I’m tempted to just fast-forward right through this part. Surely there’s been a more annoying human being graced with the privilege of being on television, but right now all I can think about is how much I’d like to punch this guy right in the mouth. I can’t believe there’s anybody out there who doesn’t feel exactly the same way.

You know that old cliché, “He’s the one you love to hate?” It’s a lie. I hate hating Coby. I just wish he would get off my television.

Oh, well. Let’s get on with this.

“I have issues,” Coby begins. Blah blah, I don’t like the way you played the game. Katie was lazy and standoffish. If he votes for Katie, he’ll actually be voting against Tom. Speaking of Tom, Coby’s words for him form a sort of back-handed compliment, until you remember their source. “You played this game almost as dirty as I would have like to,” he says, which once I diagram it I conclude means something bad. “So tonight is your chance, if you want my vote, to finally bring out that badge of courage that you wave, of honesty and truth. And I want to hear it. So I am now going to sit down and listen to every word you say.” Props to him for the Red Badge of Courage shout-out, but I think it was probably just coincidental. All-in-all, just a big waste of time. The best part was the end, and that was only because it was over.

Next up comes Gregg. “When Koror was a tribe of seven,” Gregg asks Tom, “you didn’t have immunity, and you were pretty nervous about it. You and I had a conversation, once or twice actually, about how anyone who broke the five-person alliance would have to pay for it when it came to the jury. Well I’m part of the jury. And I kept my word. I saved you. And you didn’t do the same. You didn’t pay the same respect. So why on Earth should I give you my vote?”

Tom answers simply and directly. He says that he voted Gregg out because he believed that Gregg had threatened him; this is, of course, entirely true. But Tom doesn’t know that it’s true. He says that he was taken in by Ian, that it was all Ian’s fault, and he actually apologizes, if you can believe that.

Gregg then tells Katie that she was worthless around camp, embarrassing during challenges, and mean to the other members of her tribe. “Explain to me and your jury how being so pathetic is your ‘plan.’” And he actually does air-quotes around the word “plan.”

Katie says, “I play with the cards that I have. I don’t have an athletic card.” She says the game is about getting to the finals, and that she never wavered on her plan to get to the finals.

Steph gets the next turn. Pretty, pretty girl; way too much paint on her face. Needs to wear her hair up. But a pretty girl. Not so pretty with her words, though. She asks Tom what, after promising to fight for her, he did to fight for her. Tom says that he went as far as he could, but couldn’t go against the wishes of the other members of his alliance. Steph then asks Katie why she shouldn’t vote for Tom, which is what we sports-metaphor guys would call a slow pitch down the middle. “I was really hoping that this wouldn’t be as ugly as it was,” she lies, totally covering up the fact that she told us this morning that she planned to play dirty at tribal council. Then she piles one lie on top of another: “Tom actually came to me before you came and said we need to take out Stephenie.” Tom denies everything. “You were an ace in the hole,” Tom says to Steph. “I swear I remember that conversation,” Katie insists. And with that, Steph takes her seat.

Janu comes up next. She asks Tom whether it was hard for him to compromise his integrity. Tom’s answer is vague. The game is the game, he says. I didn’t cross any lines, he says. You can’t play the game without misleading people, he says.

As Tom gives his answer, the rain begins to fall. Janu sallies on, asking Katie for “three positive and negative adjectives” to describe herself. At least she didn’t ask her what kind of tree she would be, but it’s damn close. Katie’s answer comes with more balls than sense. “Actually,” she says thoughtfully, “I don’t expect your vote, Janu. So I don’t know that I need to do that.” Woah. Pretty gutsy move. Janu returns to her seat. A little reverse-psychology from the underdog, eh? We’ll see how it works.

Next comes Caryn. “What was I to you in the game, Tom? Was I just a pawn?” Tom says that he never told Caryn they were in an alliance together, that he never lied to her. This seems to answer the question, albeit obliquely. Then he plays the same card he played with Gregg: the Ian card. He says that he believed Ian, that Ian was spreading lies about Caryn, that he was duped and that it nearly cost him the game. Caryn asks him the question again: “Did we have a real friendship?” Tom says, “I’m gonna let you find that for yourself in your heart.”

Then Caryn lays into Katie. “You were phony and cruel to everyone except Tom and Ian.” And she goes on. Lazy, mean, bad at challenges, unkind, unfaithful. “Give me one reason I should vote for you,” she says. Katie says that whatever Caryn wants to think about her personally is her own business. Caryn renews the question. “The game is about making alliances,” Katie says, “and that’s why you’re sitting over there. Because you didn’t make one.” Dum-dum-dum.

Jenn comes next. She calls Tom chauvinistic and asks Tom why she should vote for him. Tom says, “My respect for your game came late.” He tells the story about Jenn’s very last move in the game, about driving the fatal wedge between Tom and Ian. He says that he didn’t respect Jenn’s game because she didn’t let him see it until the very end. This seems to satisfy her. She then says she thought Katie squandered her chance to play the game “like a strong woman,” whatever the hell that means. If “like a strong woman” means latching on to the most vulnerable man and trying to play Lady MacBeth, then yes, Katie chose a different path than the one Jenn would have picked. Katie replies that she deserves credit for preserving her alliance. She then says something that just warms my heart. “I’m not here to prove that I’m a strong woman,” she says. I think I may actually have giggled just a little bit.

Then comes Ian. He says he wants to ask the same question of both of them; this usually means the person asking the question is going to try to be clever. This instance is no exception. Ian wants to know, “What’s the biggest reason that we, as a group, shouldn’t give you a million dollars?” I’m disappointed. I expected better of Ian.

Katie says that if you’re judging based on personality, you shouldn’t vote for her. She manages to answer the question and shame the shallowest members of the jury at the same time. Full marks.

Tom’s reply is pure cheese … and yes, frankly I eat it up. “You shouldn’t give me the million dollars because I’ve already had my payday,” he says. “Being a forty-year-old man with responsibilities at home and putting it all aside and having a little boy’s adventure where your biggest choice of the day is do I get out of the hammock and go chase snakes or sharks is kinda unique.” Not bad. Not bad at all.

This season’s finale was remarkable because, for the first time in “Survivor” history, the real drama of the show did not unveil itself at tribal council. Instead, the real drama was the conflict between Tom and Ian, and how it eventually resolved itself. That all happened behind the scenes, away from the lights, away from the expensive set, and most importantly, away from the manufactured TV sound bites of the final tribal council. I find this interesting, and I wonder what impact, if any, it’ll have on future games.

That kind of philosophical navel-gazing will have to wait for another day, though. It’s time for the closing statements. Tom goes first. “Good or bad,” he says, “you met Tom Westman. I stuck with the people I said I would stick with in the beginning even at folly.” He continues: “I’m willing to be judged on how I played the game and how I treated you.”

Katie’s statement is an apology. “I’m sorry if I hurt anyone,” she says. She goes on to say that she allied herself with Tom because he was strong, that she deserves credit for getting all the way to the finals. “I’m leaving with my self-respect,” she says. “I may not have yours.”

And then, for the last time, there’s a vote. Only this time it’s not the players who vote but the jury, and they’re not voting to exile but to award. We see some of the ballots as they are cast. Janu votes for Tom because he picked her to join the Koror tribe; this is characteristically flighty, exactly what we’ve come to expect from Janu. Coby votes for Katie, which surprises no one at all. All this proves is that it’s not going to be a clean sweep.

Of all the jurors, Ian has the hardest choice to make. He swore allegiance to both Tom and Katie. He betrayed them both at one time or another. He gave up a cash prize, a minimum six-figure payday, to win back their trust and respect. And now he has to choose.

Ian stands with the pen in his hand for a long, long time.

The camera pulls back from the island nation of Palau to which we were first introduced thirty-nine days of TV time — thirteen weeks in the real world — ago. We will not be coming back. The departure is bittersweet, as departures always are, but at least it has the virtue of being brief. Months disappear with a slow dissolve, and we find ourselves in the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City, more than nine thousand miles from where we began. Probst, wearing the same clothes in which he officiated at the final tribal council, enters bearing the vintage World War II ammunition case that holds the seven ballots. He approaches the stage through a roaring crowd, takes his place at the podium. “Let’s get to it!” he declares, raising his voice to be heard over the applause and cheers of the audience. They don’t listen. He grins widely, valuing plaudits over provender like a true man of the boards, before finally holding out his hands in the universal “take your seats” gesture every aspiring thespian hopes someday to have to employ.

When the applause finally fades, Probst gives his trademark speech. He describes the stakes: a new car, bragging rights, and a check for a million bucks. He explains the process: seven ballots in the box, takes four to win, the votes are for and not against. And with that, he opens the box and extracts the first ballot.

The crowd erupts in cheers and applause. Calls of “Tom!” and “Katie!” echo through the hall.

Probst holds, a stony expression on his face. Five second pass, then ten. He holds, continues to hold until an expectant hush fills the theater.

First vote: Tom. We’ve seen it before; it’s Janu’s ballot.

Second vote: Katie. This is Coby’s ballot. The producers are giving nothing away.

Third vote: Tom.

Fourth vote: Tom.

Fifth vote: Tom. There will be no more ballots. Tom has the requisite four votes. Tom wins “Survivor Palau.”

When the camera cuts away from Tom embracing his wife to the scene inside FDNY’s Engine Company 206, Ladder 108, for just a second, this reporter’s jaded façade slips. But just for a second. Just for a second.

Next season on “Survivor”: A brand-new batch of newbies will gather in the ruins of a thousand-year-old city deep in the jungle of Central America in “Survivor: Guatemala, the Maya Empire.” Intrigue and deception, alliances and betrayals, obstacle courses and puzzles and one surprise after another.

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This post is part of a series. You can read the whole thing here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

• Survivor Palau: The Book
• ‘The Shape of Things to Come’
• Public service announcement re: ‘Survivor’