The First Final Two
In the year 2000, reality television was not the ubiquitous term we are all used to nowadays. The genre was mostly being held up by MTV’s “the Real World,” a show about people living in a house and co-existing. It was about watching people live their lives. There was no competition, there was no winner. There were no real stakes.
Which is why Survivor’s explosion onto the scene was a momentous occasion for the genre. Suddenly, people weren’t just trying to coexist. They were doing it on a deserted island, having to vote themselves off for the chance to win a million dollars by being the last one standing.
Today, August 23rd, 2020, marks the 20th anniversary of the air of the Survivor: Borneo (or, just Survivor, as it was then known) finale. The finale received an average of 51.7 million viewers and Nielsen estimates that 125 million people watched at least a portion of the episode. Those were astronomical numbers then and they are unthinkable nowadays.
The finale would see Susan Hawk and Rudy Boesch voted out, leaving Richard Hatch and Kelly Wigglesworth as the show’s inaugural final two. Even in modern Survivor, those final two players hold a lot of weight and significance. Their respective journeys to the end still connect to stories we might see in modern Survivor.
As the game played out, Borneo became a struggle of ideologies. With reality television in its infancy, there was no blueprint for this stuff. The Borneo cast had no idea what they were in for. They had no way of knowing how big the show might become. All they knew was that they were going to be competing on a game show and that it would be broadcast on national television. With that in mind, most of the players came onto Survivor thinking more about their public perception than the game. Nobody wanted to be the bad guy in front of a worldwide audience.
I say most, because the Tagi tribe had come players who came in ready to play the game. Stacey Stillman certainly saw the perks an alliance could afford a player on Survivor. Unfortunately for her, no one on her tribe seemed to like her (and there were some fishy coincidences about her boot). There was also Sue and Richard, the two players who had their minds most concentrated on the game at hand, despite not seeing eye to eye on the execution.
Right away, Richard understood the power of numbers in this game of social strategy and got to putting together an alliance to see him through the game. Sue agreed with him, even if she didn’t necessarily agree with what he proposed (“the corporate world isn’t gonna work out here in the bush”). They formed the alliance that became the Tagi 4, which included Rudy and Kelly, and they laid waste to everyone else on their cast.
Meanwhile, the Pagong tribe did not believe in alliances. Or, depending on what you believe, they didn’t want to be shown using alliances because they quickly realized that the audience wouldn’t like seeing people gang up on others. Instead, they preferred to act based on how they felt about someone’s “deservedness”. This is how you get a vote like Borneo’s merge boot, Gretchen Cordy, being voted off 4–1–1–1–1–1–1. In a vote with 10 people, the alliance of 4 managed to have the numbers and somehow, the other 6 managed to all vote for separate people. This will never happen again.
While the alliance thrived in the game, as the show aired it became apparent who the fans were cheering for. Despite being severely outclassed on a strategic level, the Pagong tribe members were the ones getting all the audience support. Being the underdog has its way of making people cheer for you and on Survivor, there have been few bigger underdogs than the over-their-head Pagongs.
As the game progressed, Kelly started feeling morally bankrupt in her feelings about her own alliance. She started wavering on her loyalty to the Tagi 4 and on more than one occasion, voted differently. She decided that she no longer wanted to be in an alliance and simply wanted to play the game based on her feelings. Obviously, the rest of the alliance was not enthused and knew they would need to vote her out when they had the chance.
With her decision to walk away from her alliance, Kelly became an important part of Survivor history. They didn’t know it yet, but Richard and Kelly would eventually form the show’s first ever final 2. Their stylistic differences and contrasting ideologies would eventually become the tug-of-war that would decide this season’s winner and on a deeper level, would continue to exist in the Survivor meta game to this very day.
There was no greater representation of Richard and Kelly’s clashing style than the Fallen Comrades immunity challenge. Tasked with answering questions about their former tribe mates, Kelly excelled because she got to know them all on a personal basis and Richard struggled mightily. It showed where both players put their focus during their time in the game. In modern terms, Kelly was playing a social game and Richard was our first ever game-bot.
At final tribal council we would find out: alliances and strategy vs personal feelings and morality, which one would win out? Looking back on this final tribal council with 20 years of history attached to it, this final tribal council feels like it set the tone for everything that would come afterwards. It goes beyond the level that Richard won and Kelly lost and explores the very idea of what it takes to win Survivor.
There could have been a lot of bitterness towards Richard from the jury. He clearly didn’t get to know many of them as people. He outplayed most of them by aligning people together and locking Pagong out of any chances at winning the game. He was seen as the conductor that orchestrated most of the jury’s downfall. Instead of displaying sour feelings towards Richard, most of the jury felt that his gameplay had earned their votes.
Therein lies the differences between someone like Richard, who may not have made friends but also wasn’t openly antagonistic of other people in the name of “strategy”, and the Russell Hantzs of the world. Richard faced the task of convincing people to let him win even if he lacked a certain social skill in the game, no different than what Brian Heidik, Sarah Lacina and many others have had to overcome in coming 39 seasons of the show.
But if the jury mainly avoided displaying bitterness towards the openly antagonistic Richard, there’s no doubt some of them showed it towards Kelly. Like Richard, Kelly had been involved in the Tagi alliance but unlike Richard, Kelly eventually turned her back on it based on moralistic reasons. This meant that Kelly would eventually betray people who thought of her as a friend, chief among them, Sue Hawk.
Sue’s “rats and snakes” speech is undoubtedly Borneo’s most iconic moment. Sue takes the time to elaborate on why she is voting the way she is for the winner. It’s remembered for its harshness towards Kelly but I like to remember it slightly differently. In 40 seasons and counting, I don’t think anybody has ever explained the complicated dichotomy of Survivor like Sue unintentionally did in her speech.
At the end of her speech, Sue explains to the finalists why she will be voting for Richard:
I plead to the jury tonight to think a little bit about the island that we have been on. This island is pretty much full of only two things: snakes and rats. And in the end of Mother Nature, we have Richard the snake, who knowingly went after prey, and Kelly, who turned into the rat that ran around like the rats do on this island, trying to run from the snake. I feel we owe it to the island’s spirits that we have learned to come to know to let it be in the end the way that Mother Nature intended it to be. For the snake to eat the rat.
In her own mind, Sue believes that she needs to vote for Richard because he played the most proactive game and she implores the other jurors to follow suit. Her thesis is that choosing Richard is a choice she is making based on his game and her impression of how it played out. But if you were to listen the entirety of Sue’s speech leading up to her declaring her winning choice, it tells a different tale:
I have no questions. I just have statements. Rich, you’re a very openly arrogant, pompous, human being. But I admire your frankness with it. You have worked hard to get where you’re at and you started working hard way before you come to the island. So, with my work ethic background, I give that credit to you. But on the other hand, your inability to admit your failures without going into a whiny speech makes you a bit of a loser in life.
Kelly, the rafting persona queen. You did get stomped on, on national TV, by a city boy that never swam, let alone been in the woods or jungle or rowed a boat in his life. You sucked on that game. Anyways, I was your friend at the beginning of this, really thinking that you were a true friend. I was willing to be sittin’ there and put you next to me. At that time, you were sweeter than me. I’m not a very openly nice person. I’m just frank, forward, and tell you the way it is. To have you sit there next to me, and me lose $900,000 just to stomp on somebody like this.
But as the game went along and the two tribes merged, you lied to me, which showed me the true person that you are. You’re very two-faced and manipulative to get where you’re at anywhere in life. That’s why you fail all the time. So, at that point of the game, I decided then just to go out with my alliance to my family and just to hold my dignity and values in check and hoping that I hadn’t lost too many of them and play the game just as long as possible and hang in there as long as possible.
But Kelly, go back to a couple of times Jeff said to you, ‘What goes around, comes around.’ It’s here. You will not get my vote. My vote will go to Richard. And I hope that is the one vote that makes you lose the money. If it’s not, so be it. I’ll shake your hand and I’ll go on from here. But if I were to ever pass you along in life again and you were laying there dying of thirst, I would not give you a drink of water. I would let the vultures take you and do whatever they want with you, with no ill regrets.
It essentially boils down to who betrayed Sue the most. She feels most hurt by Kelly, who she thought of as a friend than Richard, a man she already perceived as disloyal and opportunistic. Richard never showed a friendlier side to Sue so when he didn’t try to save her when she needed it, she wasn’t surprised. Kelly genuinely being friendly to Sue at the time, did start off by making a bond that she would later break. Her natural ability to be friendly, something often touted as an asset for any Survivor player, ended up being Kelly’s biggest downfall. There was no logic behind Sue’s vote, just hurt feelings.
Like Richard, Kelly faced a dilemma dozens of other losing finalists would later be tasked with overcoming. Hers was successfully transitioning from having real relationships with other players to turning on them while keeping your chances of winning. Ask Dawn Meehan or All-Stars Boston Rob about that. There has never been a catch-all answer and Kelly became the first Survivor to suffer the harshness of a spurned juror. Sue was hurt by Kelly’s betrayal, and though she wouldn’t admit in those particular terms, her vote for Richard was more of a vote against Kelly than anything else.
Strategy versus social game. Who played best? Who do you like more? Those were the questions that hung in the air 20 years ago during Borneo’s finale. They’ve since hung in the air for 40 more final tribal councils. The answer is never the same depending on the season, its finalists and their jurors. Those questions are what keeps Survivor going 20 years down the line. Not these manufactured twists that productions like to throw in, simply the human involvement in this very human game.
In many ways, Survivor: Borneo feels like it belongs in a separate era. Its content focuses heavily on the characters. The pacing is much slower and the stakes always feel much lower than any other Survivor season. There is a very documentary feel at the core of Survivor: Borneo. The show hadn’t yet proved itself to CBS and nothing seems promised. Jeff Probst himself is never more human than he is on Survivor: Borneo. He’s just a guy trying to find his place on this weird game show.
At the same time, despite these differences, at its heart, Borneo’s final two represent a lot of the same discussions we have around Survivor today. The jury grappled with questions of hurt feelings and what it meant to be “deserving”. This is a topic that will be discussed on the internet weeks after any modern Survivor finale. While Borneo may feel different than its future counterparts, the season still had its fingers on the pulse of the show’s biggest, and most impossible questions. The humanity of the game remains the same, even as production adds seemingly dozens of new twists every season. If Survivor reveals a person’s true character, voting for its winner reveals Survivor’s true character. As much as Jeff Probst may want to make it more than it is, Survivor will always be the world’s most intriguing social experiment.
