All-Star Hawaii Author Notes - Finale (The Best of the Best)

by Mario Lanza

Interview with John Carroll

Interview with Gretchen Cordy

Interview with Alicia Calaway

Interview with Tina Wesson

Interview with Colleen Haskell

Interview with Jeff Probst

THE ENDING

The most common question I get after I finish a Survivor story is "When did you know that so and so was going to win?" People are always curious about what point the story stopped being about character development, and started being about me trying to sell you into accepting a particular ending.

Well, I'm proud to say that in Hawaii, I didn't know that Vecepia was going to win until around the same time you did.

For most of the story, I will finally fess up that I thought that John was going to be the winner. Yep. All the clues are there if you look for them. He has the story arc, he has the character development, he has the epicness, his character has everything. I was absolutely positive (and I was very excited) that I was going to have my first male winner in any of my All-Star stories ever. For the first time in seven years, a guy was actually going to win one of my Survivor stories.

Why was I so excited (and sure) that John was going to win Hawaii? Well for starters because I knew his character was in the right position to do so. And it all happened because of changes I made when I went back to rewrite the story.

Do you remember what I said about Boston Rob a while back in my episode notes? It all ties in here. I said that one of my biggest complaints with the original Hawaii story is that Boston Rob came off as way too much as a harmless kid, and he didn't come off as threatening at all. I wrote him much closer to Marquesas Rob than I wrote him to All-Star Rob. Which, of course, made sense, since All-Stars hadn't happened yet and there was only one way to think of the guy. Since Rob didn't do well in Marquesas, there was no way to really think of him as a dangerous player.

Well when the real All-Stars came out, and when Rob came off like such a badass, suddenly things changed. Because now, if you went back and read the original Hawaii story, the "passive, harmless" characterization of Rob was a little bit jarring. It didn't sound like Rob Mariano at all. And I knew that if I ever went back to rewrite Hawaii, that aspect of his character would have to change. He couldn't just be a goofy, helpless the kid the second time around. He had to be an alpha badass with a purpose. And the minute I decided to change his character, that pretty much changed everything. Because now that Rob was going to be my post-merge villain, that meant that my original post-merge villain (John Carroll) suddenly didn't have a character anymore. And once that happened, it freed up a lot of my storytelling options. Suddenly John became a much more interesting character than he was in the original.

ORIGINAL JOHN

Unfortunately, John Carroll was one of the weakest characters in the original Hawaii. I'm not really sure why, but for some reason he never really had all that much to do. If you recall, he really only had three things happen to him in the original story. A) He made jokes about Kathy peeing on him. B) He overthrew Lex in episode five and took over the Ahis. And then C) The heroic trio of Kathy, Gretchen, and Alicia overthrew his ass and voted him out of the game at the final six. Unfortunately that was really the entire depth of his character arc. He's Lex's second fiddle, he gets power mad, he overthrows his master (like any Greek Tragedy), and then he pays for his hubris down the road. That was it. That was John's All-Star Hawaii character in the nutshell. He was always the weakest post-merge character in the story. And I was painfully aware of this.

Why was John such a weak character in the original? Well probably because Hawaii was written almost directly after Marquesas. We didn't really know anything about the guy, and since he was such a one-dimensional shallow villain in Marquesas, it made since that we would have written him as one-dimensional and shallow in Hawaii as well. I mean, if you ever read the original Hawaii story back in 2002, you will know that EVERY SINGLE MARQUESAN was written exactly the same as they were in Marquesas. Rob=clownish, Kathy=heroic underdog, Vecepia=sneaky, John=cocky villain. That wasn't really characterization, that was just us being lazy. That was us taking characters we knew very little about, and just going with what we knew worked.

So anyway, now you can see why I was excited about John coming into his own as an interesting character in the rewrite of Hawaii. I knew that since Rob was now my villain, John was now suddenly going to get a much softer edit (I mean, you can't have two villains, not when they both hate one another). And since John was always one of my Achilles Heels in the original story, I was thrilled to actually be able to do something interesting with the guy. And so this is why I started inserting him into the story more. In the original story, I had Lex go off with Colleen and the Kekos on the "pizza in the cabin" twist. In the rewrite I changed it from Lex to John. I knew that Colleen and John were going to have an important relationship down the road (one of them was going to have to vote out the other one), and I wanted to be damn sure it was going to be painful and emotional when it happened. That's why there are scene after scene of "Colleen bonding with John" all throughout the story. Almost from day one, that was the relationship that I thought would be the key to the ending. Either Colleen was going to vote out John, or John was going to vote out Colleen. It was going to be ugly, it was going to be swift, and there were going to be reprisals for it.

Now obviously this didn't play out EXACTLY like I planned it (Colleen still voted for John to win in the end, and Alicia's vote was much more important), but you can see that I planted the seeds for a John win very early on in the game. I knew that he was going to be around at least until the final six, I knew that the Colleen-John bond was going to be important, and I knew that I had free reign to make him a likable character now that Rob had stolen his thunder as the post-merge villain.

My goal, of course, was to make John's eventual backstab of Colleen come off as "strategic" and "necessary", and not so much "assholish." I didn't want you to say, "What a dick!" I wanted you to say, "This guy's a hell of a player."

COLLEEN AND JOHN

Why was I so sure that John would have to backstab Colleen in the story? Well mainly because it was necessary. I just couldn't see any reason why anyone would ever take Colleen to the final two. And I couldn't see any scenario where she could feasibly go on an immunity run and get herself there on her own. So from day one, I was sort of working under the assumption that she was a doomed little kitten. I wanted her to have a rollercoaster story arc of helpless, then confident, then devastated (Boston Rob voted out without her knowledge), then tentatively confident again, and then blindsided. And of course I wanted John to be the one to do it. From day one, that was the arc I was working on. It was going to be the culmination of John's Richard Hatch-ness. Only a truly strategic Survivor player would be able to vote out his buddy like that.

Well, again, obviously this storyline didn't work out 100% exactly like I had planned. There were a few unexpected bumps along the way that sort of threw a wrench into it. Most important was the fact that Vecepia was a lot more powerful than I originally expected her to be. In the episode that Colleen went home, it was actually Vecepia and Alicia that got her sent home, not John. That didn't work out like I expected it to at all. And again, that just shows how difficult it is to plan out things like story arcs and character arcs when you're writing an open-ended story like this. I had a storyline involving John and Colleen that I thought would have been absolutely perfect, but here come troublemakers Vecepia and Alicia to throw a wrench into everything and muck up my plans. I so so so wanted John to be the reason Colleen was voted out that night, but I couldn't do it because-- at the time-- Alicia's storyline (and Vecepia's, to a lesser degree) were far more important. All of a sudden, it was dawning on me that Alicia and Vecepia were far more important than John to the end of Hawaii. And so all of a sudden there went my Colleen/John story arc. Bam. After 30+ days of building it up, I had to throw it all away because this was suddenly no longer his story.

By the way, if you're curious, yes I just threw in all the "John yelled at Colleen"/"John was way too harsh to her on the way out" stuff as sort of a concession. I just did that so I could feel like there was a payoff for my story arc. No, I never had my big "John backstabbed Colleen" moment in Hawaii (sigh). But at least I can say I had a "John was a dick to Colleen" moment. It's not quite the same, and-- in my opinion-- it wasn't powerful at all. But hey, at least I can say I tried to fake a story arc payoff.

Oh yeah, and if you're sharp, you'll also know that I cheated there. John never actually DID yell at Colleen in the story. I just had other characters say that he did. Every single time it is mentioned, it is either Colleen reminiscing, or it is someone else talking about it. I conveniently left out the actual "John yells at Colleen" scene, because I wanted to give myself options. If Colleen did in fact come back to vote for John to win at the end of the game (which I thought might happen, since his opponent would either be Vecepia or Alicia), I didn't want his yelling spree to be too harsh and too "unrecoverable from." So I just left it out altogether. I wonder how many people actually noticed that.

Of course some readers might ask "Why were you so sure that John was going to backstab Colleen? Why couldn't it have been the other way around? If you had to lose one of them, why couldn't it have been John?" Well thank you for asking. The reason I knew it would happen this way was threefold:

A) Colleen wouldn't have the guts to vote out her best friend. She's a good talker, and she claims a good game, but she simply doesn't have it in her to be that cutthroat. It's what makes her Colleen. It's why people like her.

B) I knew that Colleen's exit had to be emotional and gut-wrenching. Since she's such a fan favorite, I knew that her exit had to be like a punch to the stomach. You had to HATE it. And what better way to do that than to have her best friend in the game, her "safe place", slit her throat when she's not looking like she's a hog in a warehouse. That was the image I was going for. It didn't quite work out that way, but I knew that the true way to memorialize Colleen was to make her the ultimate victim. I wanted you to feel horrible for her.

C) What was the third reason I knew John would outlast Colleen? Well this is probably the most important one. I did it that way because almost every writer would have written it the OTHER way. Almost everyone else would have had the meek little underdog outlast the big bad strategist. Why? Well because what happens. Survivor stories are generally written as "good defeats bad" morality plays. The good guy (the young cute girl) always wins. I didn't want my storyline to come off that way.

I've said this before, but I like to compare my writing style to movie screenplays. And I like to say I have more balls than your average screenwriter. Have you ever realized how in most movies (especially horror movies), the family dog never dies? Well I'm not like that. I like to do what readers won't expect.

Unlike most horror movie screenplays, I like to kill the dog first.

VECEPIA THE WINNER

And so now we come to the most important question. When on earth did this story stop being about John, and start being about Vecepia?

Well to be honest, it wasn't until very very late in the game that I started realizing that Vecepia could actually win. Like Jeff said in his postgame interview, she really wasn't even on my radar at all. For most of the game, Vecepia was just this sneaky little chameleon who I loved to write for (she was probably my favorite character), but I knew that the best she could do was wind up as final two goat. I mean, sure, I thought that Vee was awesome as a character, and I thought she was awesome as a player too. Who wouldn't? But a former winner winning Hawaii? Really? For most of the story, I agreed with the other characters who said that that was impossible.

But then came three events in the story that really sort of changed my perspective on things.

The first event, of course, was the big final eight showdown between the Kekos and the Ahis. In the original story, you might recall that that episode was called "The Defiant One". And it culminated in Colleen refusing to side with the Ahis, and Vecepia being voted out 4-3-1. If I do say so myself, I thought it was an awesome episode.

Well when I came to the final eight showdown in the Hawaii rewrite, unfortunately I sort of lost that episode. It just wasn't going to happen. I tried to strongarm the storyline to have it happen the exact same way again (Colleen's defiance costs Vecepia the game), but unfortunately I had made too many changes to the characters, and too many changes to the storyline. There was no way Vecepia was going to be the target that night. It was going to be Rob. So I wound up losing Rob instead of Vecepia that night, and suddenly Vecepia was wide open to make a sneaky little UNDERDOG run to the endgame.

I hadn't anticipated that.

So anyway here's where Vecepia's story starts to develop. Up until the final eight, I had written her as a sneaky, and slightly villainous, schemer who was going to meet an unpleasant fate. That was just her Hawaiian destiny. She was bound to get outsmarted and defeated by inferior players. But all of a sudden, with Rob gone, now her character suddenly got interesting. Because now not only was she the only quote-unquote "villain" left in the game, she was also left in a spot where the other players were bound to forget about her. Because with Rob gone, the Kekos thought this game was now in the bag. They had turned the tables on "the bad guys", they had taken over the majority, and suddenly there was no reason to fear a player like Vecepia. She was sneaky, true, but she had no more allies. They could write her off and forget about her.

And right there, staring me smack dab in the face, was Vecepia's new storyline. Holy crap. She's now an underdog schemer. A powerless "bad guy". She's now a villain I can get you to root for. And as an author, I can tell you one thing. When you see that, you take advantage of it. That storyline doesn't happen much!

So now Vee had a new destiny. No longer was she Rob's second in command and compatriot-in-mischief. Now she was the lost Ahi. The woman without a friend. And this is where I really started building her up as a quote-unqote "anti-hero." Starting in the very next episode, I started putting in scene after scene of Vecepia repeatedly being told "You can't win, no one would ever vote for you." Of course, part of this was because I really thought she COULDN'T win (a former winner win?), but the main reason I did that was because I wanted you to start rooting for her. No matter how casually Vecepia might have been on your radar as a reader before, from this point on I wanted every scene involving Vecepia to make you think, "That poor woman." Since she was my favorite character, and because she was in a perfect position for some audience sympathy, I wanted people to--- however tentatively-- start rooting for her.

So that was the first step into this becoming Vecepia's story. It was the switcheroo in the old "The Defiant One" episode at the final eight. At one point, she had once gone home in that episode, but in the rewrite she was now still hanging around.

And that, of course, leads to big Vecepia moment number two.

The second thing that made me realize this was Vecepia's story was a very interesting exchange between Tina and Vecepia in episode eight or nine. I'm not sure if you remember it, but it was right after the "Tina tells Vee they need to stick together and face each other at the end" speech. Vecepia was walking down a trail, all alone, and she comes to the realization that there's no way she can win this game, even against Tina. She knows that no one is going to vote for the sneaky perceived-to-be-hypocritical black woman over the goody goody not-perceived-to-be-a-hypocrite white woman, even though they are essentially the same player. I remember writing that scene (including a mention of how Vee was smart enough not to turn it into a race thing for the cameras), and I remember thinking, wow. I have just turned Vecepia into the most rootable underdog I have ever had in any of my stories. I remember reading back over that whole section and thinking how well it flowed, and how much it added to her storyline. And all of a sudden, once I had written that, her story took on a whole new dimension. Because if you recall, the very next scene was Vecepia going up to the Plateau to talk to Gretchen. I showed how Vee was subtly trying to win jury votes over the unexpecting (and presumably unbeatable) Tina.

Vecepia's storyline as the future winner really started right there. Because if you recall, it was that vote from Gretchen that later led to her victory. That scene was the key to the story.

Oh, and what was the third moment that made me realize Vecepia was probably going to be the winner? That's easy. It was the loved-one-visit episode with Sean. I loved that Sean scene so much (which is ironic, because I was scared to death to write for Sean before this), that I knew that the whole Vee-John relationship simply had to have a payoff at the end. Sean's comments to John that "he better not screw Vee over", and that "she can't win, but she doesn't need to know that", just screamed out foreshadowing to me, and I knew they had to come back into play later. I specifically wanted John NOT to screw Vee over in the final four and the final three. And then I wanted her to pull out a win when nobody (including Sean) thought she had even the slightest chance. I wanted her to be the underdog story that no one expected.

So anyway, there you go. That's how Hawaii subtly morphed from being a story about John, to being a story about Vecepia. And I thought I did a pretty good job of it too. Vee was a lot less obvious than my winners usually are. In fact, going into the final vote, it was really about 50/50 if John was going to win, or if Vee was going to win. I had sort of set myself up in a perfect storm where either one of them could have pulled off a win, and it would have made sense for the story. That was incredibly fortunate. It doesn't happen very much.

So why did Vee wind up winning the final vote?

Well I'd love to say there was a logistical reason for it. I'd love to say something like "I said that John was going to win in episode one, and I wanted a payoff." Or "John was the better player, and he deserved it more." But I couldn't say that. Vee and John both played outstanding games, and they both deserved it. Either one of them would have been a very deserving winner. Since they had played such incredibly disparate types of games, you could easily say that A was better than B, based on whatever type strategy you prefer. It would make sense either way.

But here-- for the official record-- is why I went with Vee.

Ready?

I had Vee win because that was who the readers wanted to win.

There. There you go. I admitted it. Nobody said I don't write to please. It was basically a flip-a-coin choice between two outstanding players, and I decided to go with not only my favorite character in the story, but the one that something like 95% of the readers were dying to see win. I went with the popular audience pleaser. Don't ever say I never gave you guys anything.

And oh yeah, I'll be honest. I was also extremely tempted by the fact that the theme of Hawaii had turned out to be "winners can't win." Oh really? Winners can't win? Well take that, Jenna Lewis. This is what All-Star Survivor is supposed to look like. Winners can win, if they are given a chance.

The real All-Stars was an abortion. I hated every minute of it. It single-handedly ruined Survivor for me.

I like this All-Stars better.

GRETCHEN

Of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention the only other person who could have plausibly won Hawaii. Our dear Keko friend, Gretchen. Even though I was pretty sure for a long time that John and Vee would be my final two (barring a sudden Tina strategy flip), there was always Gretchen sitting there in the back of my head. I always had her on my radar as a possible winner. Even though it seemed implausible that she could ever get there on her own, even though she was the most unlikely final two contestant in the history of my stories, I always had an inkling of an idea that a Gretchen win would make this an incredible story. I thought, wow, if she came back and won this, we will have a very inspirational ending.

And I tried. You know? I threw hints in there that Gretchen was going to win, and I had conversations about how they were scared that she was going to win. I had people talk all over the place about how you can't let Gretchen in the final two, because she would slaughter everybody. And I meant it too. If Gretchen really had pulled off an immunity run (based on random chance, of course), and if she had ended up in the final two, you would have had a very different ending to All-Star Hawaii. She would have wiped the floor with them.

I was surprised as anyone when Gretchen wound up in the final three. I really had no idea she was going to get that far. And I actually started rooting for her a little bit as we got down to that all-important dice roll. I knew it wouldn't be the most realistic ending in the world, but man, if Gretchen had won that F3 immunity, and had won All-Star Survivor, it would have been quite a storyline for her. That probably would have been my best character arc ever.

But alas, it didn't happen. She had one chance to win Survivor, she came so close, but she fell just short. I rolled one die the night before I wrote the F3 immunity challenge, and her number simply didn't come up. John's numbers were 1 and 2. Gretchen's numbers were 3 and 4. And Vecepia's numbers were 5 and 6.

I rolled a 1.

Sorry, Gretchen. You came so close. But that's how it works. :(

Of course, I then had to invent the whole "Gretchen hurts her arm" storyline, as a callback to an earlier episode. I knew it was quite unrealistic that a healthy and determined Gretchen would lose a final three endurance challenge like that. I mean, come on, the woman once taught torture resistance to military people. You think she wouldn't know how to block out pain? I had to have a reason why she would plausibly lose, and of course I had one in a pre-existing shoulder condition. Luckily I set that foreshadowing up well before it happened.

Of course that also worked well with my "softening John up as a character" strategy, because as a nurse he could then tend to Gretchen's injury the night she was voted off. I was able to make him come off as a nice guy, right before the final jury vote.

In other words, I killed two birds with one stone with that one. Both those events worked well for the storyline.

GREECE AND ALASKA PARALLELS

I have said this before, but I wanted to say it in my finale notes as well, just to reiterate it.

There was one thing about my Alaska story that I LOVED. More than anything else in the story, one aspect always stood out to me.

And no, it isn't Greg. Greg is just me. He was easy to write.

***CAUTION: GREECE AND ALASKA SPOILERS AHEAD***

The thing about Alaska that I loved was that I built up a character (Helen), who was completely beatable, who had no chance to win, who I even TOLD you had no chance to win... and then she won anyway. I loved that ending. As a writer, I found it incredibly satisfying to sell you one ending, and then pull the wool over your eyes and give you the other ending that you didn't even know you were rooting for. As a writer, that was one of my proudest accomplishments.

And then, to counter that, there was one thing I was extremely proud about with Greece.

In Greece, my proudest moment as a writer was the whole Tanya/Stephanie plot twist. It wasn't something I did intentionally (it was based more on faulty intel than anything), but all of a sudden-- in episode eight-- I went from two characters hating one another's guts, to Tanya letting on that the whole thing was an act and that she and Stephanie were actually quite close outside the game and had been working together. And I remember when I wrote that, it was like a punch in the gut. In one sentence, and one little smile from Tanya, it changed around the entire way you looked at the story. You had been reading Greece one way for seven episodes, and then for the next six episodes, it was from a whole different perspective.

I have said many times before how proud I was of that moment, and if you are paying attention, you will notice that I did the exact same thing in Hawaii as well. In fact, if you're curious, I was actually able to steal BOTH my favorite things about Alaska and Greece, and work them into Hawaii.

Remember the "she can't win, she'll never win, why even bother?" storyline for Helen from Alaska? Well guess who got that exact same treatment in Hawaii? After all, Alaska was my most popular and well-received ending ever. Since I was very troubled that my winner (Alicia) wasn't well received the first time around in Hawaii, don't you think I would be smart enough to take a strategy that worked in Alaska, and just use it again? I mean, come on, it's not rocket science that Vecepia's and Helen's edits were almost the exact same towards the end. I definitely wanted to please the readers this time around. So I just went with what worked.

And then of course we come to my "flip flop" moment (which is what I called the Tanya/Stephanie revelation in Greece.) This was the moment where you had been looking at the story one way, and then with one sentence, it changed your entire perception around. I loved, loved, loved that moment in Greece, and I wanted to do one again in Hawaii. In fact I knew I had to use one. I just wasn't sure where.

And then it hit me. The final Tribal Council! I can just do it at the very end of the story, right before I unveil a surprise winner! Where else would be better to have a flip flop moment?

So if you're wondering, yes that was my flip flop moment. It was Vecepia calmly smiling at the jury, and telling them that John didn't drag her to the final two, she was the one who had been dragging HIM.

It was meant to change your entire perception of the story. And right at the end too.

It was very sneaky, but I was proud of the way it worked out. And it was perfect timing too, because it came right at the end, with the one swing vote juror (Gretchen) who ended up voting for Vee to win. I loved the timing and the overall irony of that. Hope you guys liked it as well.

So anyway, those were my Alaska and my Greece homages.

ALICIA

What more can I say about Alicia? Even though she won my first story, I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with her as a character. I love her because she's fun to write, and because emotion-wise, she is all over the place. But at the same time I hate her because none of the readers care about her. In fact I don't think you could find one person who would flat out say, "Man I really like that Alicia. What a great character." Her winning the original Hawaii was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me. You talk about reader apathy. People didn't even hate her enough to be mad about it.

And then of course there's the whole, "I met Alicia and she said she wanted to read Hawaii, and then she dissed me" thing. But we don't need to talk about that.

So this was the dilemma I had with Alicia in the Hawaii rewrite. How on Earth do I write her as a fun and interesting character that people will have a reaction to, while knowing there is zero chance I will ever let her win because nobody cares about her? How do you pull that off?

I knew that Alicia was going to make it to at least the final five or six. That was just what the storyline dictated. She was going to be around for a long time. And I knew that she was going to get snubbed by someone on the way out. That's just the way it is with Alicia. She's no fun if she doesn't get blindsided and make enemies before she goes to the jury. Without that jury anger, she's an incredibly boring character. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. As Survivor fans, we like our angry Alicia.

And this of course is how I stumbled onto the storyline that eventually worked out for me. It wasn't planned at all, I certainly had no idea that Alicia and John would ever become mortal enemies. But I thought, "Hey, maybe she could team up with the most powerless Ahi?" I just didn't see Alicia going down as a hapless Pagonging once the game got down to 4-2. I saw her as being way more interesting than that, and way more impulsive. So I thought, hmmm, wouldn't it be fun if she made a bond with John (a fellow hothead), and then she saved him, and then they got into a pissing match about who owed who what? Wouldn't that give her a reason to exist in the story?

So anyway, voila. There you go. Alicia becomes interesting, Alicia pulls herself into a very powerful (yet tenuous) position in the game, and the last two episodes are almost solely dedicated to the showdown between Alicia and John and if he is going to betray her. And all of this while I am conveniently hiding my real winner Vecepia behind all the (ha, you knew it was coming) drama.

In other words, yes. I was incredibly pleased with how Alicia's character came out. She didn't go out like a chump, you cared far more about her (one way or another) than you would have if she had simply been Pagonged, and it gave me a great showdown in the final jury between her and John. That was a relationship that I think was begging to be explored, and I was incredibly happy with the way it worked out in the end. It was a good example of how you can invent a dynamic story arc in just four or five episodes, despite there being no foreshadowing leading up to it earlier in the story. You just take two characters who need something to do, you throw them together into a double alligator death roll, and you see what happens when one of them wins.

This time, John won in the end. Or did Alicia? I bet their answers would be different, depending on who you asked.

In either case, I was just thrilled that people actually cared about her this time.

THE FALL OF KEKO

Ah yes. Poor, sad Keko. Doomed to be picked off, one by one, by the "evil" Ahis. Yet it wasn't always that way. In the original story the three Keko women staged a dramatic, heroic comeback and wound up winning the game.

Why?

Well because that's what EVERYONE does in their first story. That's how everyone wrote about Survivor back in 2002. The good guys ALWAYS won. There was no way the Kekos WEREN'T going to win the original Hawaii. I'm sorry to say that to people who think I "cheated" the second time around and forced the story in a certain direction, but I cheated the first time around too. The Kekos were ALWAYS going to win. They had to. Back then the good guys always won!

So anyway, this time around I decided to scrap that. I was like, yeah, it would be great if the "good guys" came back and won again. But that isn't very realistic. I mean, come on, they were down 6-3, in a game with no twists, against some of the best strategists (Rob, John, Vee, Tina) that the game has ever seen. Would the Ahis really fall apart like that? Of course they wouldn't. Gretchen, Alicia, and Kathy were doomed from the start.

So anyway, if you're wondering why the Kekos didn't come back this time, I'll tell you why. They didn't come back because A) They wouldn't come back, and B) Because I'm a much ballsier writer now. In 2002, you NEVER would have had Vee and John and Rob take down the Kekos. In 2008, I'm fine with that.

Besides, I managed to turn Vecepia into a "good guy" along the way. So I gave you the same ending, just a little bit differently. :)

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