Survivor Live Internet Talk Show with Jonathan Penner
Episode 12 Survivor: Cook Islands  Cast-Off 
Segment 1 Transcript

DR:  He flipped, he flopped and then he flip flopped right out of the game.  Jonathan Penner is out of Survivor but on Survivor Live.  He's gonna talk all about it, taking your calls.   Jonathan Penner, welcome, my man.  Good to have you here.

JM:  And you clean up so well.

Jonathan:   Thank you very much.  I'm sorry to be here.

JM:  We're sorry you had...I'm sorry to see you.

DR:  I've written about this in my columns on EW.com, how basically when you and Candice stepped off that mat, that game move saved the season.  It became an incredible season to watch.  It's thanks to your impulsiveness I guess. 

Jonathan:  It was informed impulsiveness.  The fact is that I thought that Adam had the idol.  That was my mistake.

JM:  Did Candice tell you?

Jonathan:  No.  I knew I didn't have it.  I knew she didn't have it.  I asked Yul like, "You don't have it, right?"  And Yul...

JM:  He said, "no"?

Jonathan:  He said, "No, I don't have it."   That was the right thing to do so I knew that somebody had it.  I figured it was Adam.  I thought that it would come into play much later in the game but when my ally stepped off the mat and I saw the numbers shift and I thought I was gonna have to head towards the idol anyway. 

JM:  Immediately when you walked over after a couple of hours passed did you go, "Oh my God this was a bad decision."

Jonathan:  Hours? 

JM:  Seconds?

Jonathan:  Maybe by the time I got to the other mat.

JM:  Because they were very standoffish towards you.

Jonathan:  It was horrific.  Obviously I had one second to make this impulsive choice, right?  And I really was determined to be much more like Bligh than like Christian.  I was not going to mutiny if I got the opportunity.  There I go. 

DR:  That looked like a skip off the mat.

Jonathan:  Well, my legs started moving without my brain knowing... like...don't do this, don't do it.  You just did it, schmuck, you didn't listen to me.  So I'm like, oh what a great schmuck move I just made.  What I realized of course was, though I went to the numbers which may have been the right thing to do, I did make it to the merge in the numbers tribe.  What I forgot was that if they had to get rid of anybody it was going to be me first.  So I assumed I was a goner instantaneously.  That it really was a very stupid move.  That they didn't get rid of me, I still don't quite understand.

JM:  You got 15 votes against you, about 15, I think, which is a lot.  If you really stuck around when you have all these votes...

DR:  You just can't get rid of him.

Jonathan:  Or the sun.

JM:  You worked it out. 

DR:  What was interesting about stepping off the mat was that you're analyzing the situation.  You've got Yul who is obviously a powerhouse in many ways, strategically, athletically.  You have Ozzy who is kicking ass in the challenges.  You look at the people on the other tribe and you guys have been swapping challenges back and forth but I think this is just a better group to be with.  But obviously you had the sort of the...

Jonathan:  You mean the Aitu were better to be with?

DR:  Right, the Aitu...

Jonathan:  I definitely agree.  I liked them a lot more.

JM:  You said that.  You said, "I'd rather have them win than..."

Jonathan:  Well, ultimately that's what I felt but you know until Yul showed me the idol I really thought that I had made my bed.  I had survived long enough with the Raros and I was gonna march on, try to, with the other four of them.  Then he put me sort of between a rock and hard place and said, for all intents and purposes he said, "If you don't vote with us we're going to vote for you."

JM:   Why not go back to Candice and them and say, "Yul has the idol."  And then change up the game a little bit. 

Jonathan:  I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do because the truth was, I liked the Aitu people better.  I honestly felt like they deserved to march on if it was going to be four against four, if I was out of the equation, which I pretty much knew I was gonna be.  I'd rather see them go forward anyway.  I went one step behind that and said, "What if Yul has the idol."  Let's talk about that and let it be their idea.  I could say to Yul if they figured it out, "You know what, they know you have the idol" or "they're not sure you have the idol" and keep playing.  They said, "He doesn't have the idol."  And I'm like, "Well do you have the idol?"  And he's [Adam] like, "No, I don't have the idol."  I'm like, "I don't have the idol. Candice doesn't have the idol. He [Yul] was out on Exile Island.  What if he has the idol?"  "He doesn't have the idol and let's not talk about it anymore."  It literally was like that.  I can't work with these people.  I'm supposed to be aligned with these people?  They're not interested in what I have to say. 

Caller:  Jonathan, let me just personally thank you for making this the most interesting season yet.  You're my favorite player.

Jonathan:  Oh, Jason, thank you man.  

Caller (follow up): Yul will probably win it all but I was really hoping for a final two for you.  What do you think towards the end when you were coming back from Exile Island, did they totally shut you out?  Or could you extract any reasoning at all behind your departure?

Jonathan:  Thank you for the question.  No, there was nothing to be said.  They obviously made up their mind.  I was away for two days.  I tried to talk to them.  I tried to reason with them.  You saw the footage.  I thought it was pretty hilarious actually.  Becky and Sundra tried to like disappear into the woods and were like, "we're gonna get wood."  As if I couldn't see them.  As if we hadn't been talking for 33 days at that point.  "It's Adam right?"  "Yeah, it's Adam, that's the plan."

JM:  Was bringing back the food a part of that decision?  Like, "oh maybe we should keep them around, they brought us corn."  Which is ridiculous by the way.  Ridiculous reason to keep somebody around.

Jonathan:  Basically I think so.  But most importantly, Jason, I really think that they perceived me as a threat.  They knew that I was not going to go gentle into that good night.  I was not going to say, "Thank you for taking me to the final five.  I'll get off the bus here."  I was gonna fight and continue to run towards the daylight as much as I could.

DR:  It's interesting because in your comments afterwards it didn't seem like you were even upset that they had lied to you but then they just lied so poorly. 

Jonathan:  But basically they told me what I needed to hear.  I mean, they really did let me know.  Yul and I continued to talk and he said, "Look, I'll give it one more shot to see if I can keep you in the game."  And he went and talked to them and then promptly fell asleep.  Which I knew meant for sure my goose was cooked.  And then I went to Tribal and forgot my hat and asked for my hat back.

JM:  Did you get your hat back? 

Jonathan:  I did finally get the hat back because I saw how people treated people who got voted off, clothing and things like that with not a lot of respect and burn them or wipe themselves with them or do crazy things with them and I did not want to see that happen to my hat. 

JM:  Well, that's a nice group of people you're working with there.  Real respectful. 

DR:  The caller brought up an interesting point, he said you probably didn't have a chance to make it to the finals anyway.  Did you think at that point when you were still in the game and about to go out, "if I do make it to the final two these people are going to respect me so much for making it that they'll have to vote for me."  Or "these people will be so emotionally blind that there's no way I'm going to win."

Jonathan:  Obviously I was hoping to let them make that choice and to be in a position where at least I would make it to the final two.  Part of me said, "if I can make it to the final two I will have outplayed, outlasted and outwitted all of them."  Maybe if they were playing as rational a game as I tired to play they would have respected that. I think that the truth is that most of them were not playing a rational game.  It was a very emotional game.  I didn't think that Brad, Jenny and Rebecca really had that much of a gripe with me because it was the other folks that voted them out.  I was like, "Who do you want to vote out?  Not me?  Great.  I'll vote for anybody you want."  It really was Nate and Adam and Parvati and Candice who got those people voted out.  But I didn't get the opportunity because I think that Becky and Sundra certainly saw that maybe if I got to the final two with them, I'd have a pretty good shot at winning.  I do believe that. 

DR:  Let's take a look at the cold wind blowing over camp when Jonathan returned from Exile.

<video clip of Jonathan on CSI: NY>

DR:  What was that?  That wasn't the right clip.  How did that get in there?

JM:  That was definitely a hot wind.  

Jonathan:  It is hard out here for a pimp.  That was me on CSI: New York playing a pimp with great gusto.  Thank you for showing that now people can believe that I play a villain on TV as well as am a villain. 

JM:  And you do it well.

DR:  Yeah.  I've seen his work on The Tick and Arrested Development. 

JM:  And this was before Survivor so you do have some credibility there. 

DR:  Alright.  That was a little fun and games.  Let's get to stuff that wasn't so fun for Jonathan.  Take a look at the real clip.

<video clip of Jonathan getting the silent treatment back at camp>

JM:  Do you think it was an age thing?  Who do you think said, "Jonathan's got to go tonight."

Jonathan:  Oh, I think Parvati and Adam basically said...

JM:  And they listened to them, why listen to them now?

DR:  Do you think it was because Yul was worried about votes on the jury?

Jonathan:  Yeah.

JM:  He didn't worry about that last week, though.

Jonathan:  Strategically they had to wait, I believe, two weeks, two votes, so even if they got rid of me, they absolutely had the majority vote.  If they got rid of me before Candice then there was the three of them, all they needed to do was pull Ozzy or Sundra over and it was too many.

JM:  But everyone was still going on to the jury, though, so if you were going to vote you out...

Jonathan:  I don't blame Yul for this.  I don't resent Yul for this because I would have done the same thing.  Basically, they made him an offer he couldn't refuse or he said, "if Jonathan's going anyway, if the animosity is so great or the threat is so great or whatever it was that they said to them...if the threat was so great that we have to get rid of him, let's do it now so that I don't hurt my alliance with Sundra, Becky and Ozzy."  That made complete sense to me.

Caller:  <Aramis>  Hey Dalton, hey Jennaconda, I love the show.  Jonathan, I wanted to congratulate you on setting a new Survivor record.  You received 15 votes against you this season.  I think that's a new single season record. 

Jonathan:  I rule.

Caller:  My question is, when it was nine people left in the game, and you were faced with the decision to vote for Yul or vote for Nate and if you'd voted for Yul, it would have bounced off of Yul and the immunity idol would have then been out of play.  Nate would have gone home anyway and it would have been a 4/4 tie with a tiebreaker the next week.  Do you know what the tiebreaker would have been?  Was it the purple stones or was it the fire making? 

Jonathan:  I don't know, honestly.

JM:  I don't think they do the stones. 

Jonathan:  I thought it was a fire making challenge. 

JM:  It is.  

Jonathan: The reason I didn't do that beyond my feelings for the two different tribes, was if I had done that...in other words...told Yul that I was voting with them...told the others that I was voting with them...then cast some extra vote for Becky or for Parvati or whomever...then I would have had eight enemies.  The Aitutaki people would have known that they couldn't trust me right?  Because I had told them I was voting one way and didn't.  And the Raro people would have known they couldn't trust me because I would have told them I was voting one way and didn't.  There was no question to me that it was the least viable move that I could have made.  The other thing I could have done was go back and really tell Raro, "He has the idol, we can't vote for Yul. We have to vote for Becky, etc, etc."  The problem was that I did not trust Nate at all.  I barely trusted Parvati.  And the other two I did not believe were going to keep me around.  I went with the devil I knew and in the event that I was going to get voted out, I wanted to and still want to see the Aitutaki four go further than the Raro four.  I think that they deserve to be in the final four. 

JM:  We saw a little bit of what looked like Ozzy's hostility towards you.  Did you sense that?  That he was the one in the group who seemed to be...he was like...when he was hiding the food he definitely put your name in there.  It seemed like he had a little bit more of a battle with you than maybe Yul.

Jonathan:  Oh absolutely Ozzy did.  But again, I didn't take it personally. 

JM:  Why him, though. 

Jonathan:  Because he saw me as a threat.  Before I mutinied it was no question that he was the next on the chopping block.

JM:  Ozzy?

Jonathan:  Ozzy was for sure.  We knew that he was the biggest threat.  We didn't want to have him as an individual immunity challenger and I mutinied and essentially saved his hide.  I take nothing away from Ozzy and the truth is, he's an immunity monster.  The guy is a fantastic competitor...

JM:  He's dangerous.

Jonathan:  ...and though I have some problems with him, there's no question the guy deserves to go far in the game.  I wouldn't never take that away from him. 

JM:  Everybody gets to a point in the game with the help of other people.  You're not taking it away from him but you definitely maybe contributed to him staying longer which is fair giving the credit because everyone who's been there and everyone who's won there has been someone who made a decision or someone else who has helped you go farther. 

DR:  You have to balance the game when you're at that point.  When you're two tribes winning those tribal things without letting a future threat get so far.

JM:  Clearly, I would want to get rid of Ozzy as soon as possible.  The guy is going to win...

DR:  Oh you would?

JM:  Well, maybe.  He's welcome at my house for breakfast any day. 

Jonathan:  Interestingly, he was going to be the vote that we were going to cast when we voted off Flica.  It was going to be Ozzy.  We changed our vote that day because he performed so well in the challenge and was obviously providing so much food and Flica was a wild card that was driving some other people crazy.  I was happy to go along with my alliance and vote the way they wanted to.  But we always knew that he was going to have to go home sooner rather than later.  We let him stick around, I mutinied and he was able to stay in the game.  More power to him. 

DR:  And he helped Yul stay in the game.  We're going to take a quick break. 

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