The 115 Funniest Things to Ever Happen on Survivor

#61. Chris's final TC performance - Bullshit up to his ears
Vanuatu - Finale

It is my belief that Chris Daugherty is the single most polarizing winner in Survivor history. You either love him, or you hate him, and there's very little ground in between. In fact, you can even break down this division by gender if you wanted to, because I can honestly say I've only met a handful of females who liked Chris. But then again, what do you expect? In a season that was totally divided down gender lines, one in which the producers even went out of their way to bait the women into a gender war, of course women are going to hate Chris Daugherty. I mean, what do you expect? The entire point of Vanuatu was for the women to hate the men!

Don't believe me? Think back to the first episode of Vanuatu, and how the women had to sit and watch the men take part in all the festivities. Think that wasn't designed to spark an all-out gender war? It's my belief that the genders had mixed a little too well in the Amazon, and the producers didn't like it. I think the Amazon cast had too many young players and too many swimsuit models, and the genders ended up flirting way too much for the gender war to actually take place. So I think the producers tried to fix that in Vanuatu. Because this time around, they cast older people, they cast more women who were big into "girl power", and they specifically cast women who were never going to flirt (Ami, Scout, Twila, Lisa, Mia). And then, just for good measure, the producers "baited" the women in the first episode by making them watch a sexist ritual.

I have always believed that the producers of Vanuatu wanted to see what would happen if the men and the women really did have a gender war, like they had expected to have happen back in Amazon. So they baited the women in the first episode, they sent them into a furious "woman takes all" gender war, and it all backfired when Chris ended up taking home the million dollar prize. The producers did all they could, they did everything they could to ensure that the men would be hated and the men would then be destroyed.. and then it backfired in their faces when a borderline-sexist unlikable slob defeated everybody. So yes the producers got their gender war, yes they got the women (and the audience) to hate all the men, but no they didn't get the winner they had been hoping for. And if Vanautu ended up unpopular because of this, the producers really have nobody to blame but themselves.

Why am I bringing all this up? Well it's because the final Vanuatu episode makes women look so bad that I know I might get some flak for including this moment on the Funny 115. I know a lot of people don't enjoy the way Chris played the Alinta women in the final Tribal Council. But I don't care. I still think it is funny as hell. Because I have never seen a human being more full of shit than Chris was in his final jury performance. He was literally, 100%, neck-deep buried in a pile of bullshit. And he loved it. He was lying, he was playing, he was cajoling, and I have never seen a human being revel in this type deception as much as he did. In fact, Chris was having so much fun telling people what they wanted to hear that I half expected him to just break out in giggles towards the end. Because at times, it seemed like he honestly couldn't believe that people were buying what was coming out of his mouth.

Are you people actually buyin' all this???

Chris's mustache-twirling, "I can't believe you guys are buyin' this shit!" performance was one of the more surreal things I have ever seen happen on Survivor. And my god, if the producers had intended to make the women the stars and the heroes of Vanuatu (as I have always predicted), they couldn't have failed any worse if they had tried! In fact, I can't imagine the producers ever saw this ending coming in a million years. Chris Daugherty winning? The guy in the red wife-beater? Over these women? But... the Vanuatu season wasn't supposed to end that way! Not in a million years! The Sole Survivor was supposed to be one of the women!

But here's how Chris managed to do it...

Step #1: Before the final jury, persuade Twila to tell people off if they give her crap during Tribal Council. This step was probably fairly easy to do. Twila was always a verbal accident waiting to happen. That made her the perfect opponent for Chris in the final two.

Chris and Twila

Step #2: Kiss the ass of every single member of the jury. And I'm being serious when I say every single member. Because it wasn't enough that Chris kissed the women's asses. No, he did the same thing for the votes he was already guaranteed to get! Hell, Chris puckered up to Sarge so badly he practically tasted sphincter. And Chris's lips are still lodged somewhere around Ami's bottom. See, he didn't just kiss Ami's ass. He practically tongue-kissed it.

Chris kisses Julie's ass

Step #3: Apologize to all of the women. This was the key to his entire jury strategy, and it was a skill that Chris mastered better than anyone else. Because no matter how insincere his words were, all Chris had to do was give the girls the puppy dog eyes, well up a few fake tears, and talk about how he "did them wrong." He did this over and over during the final Tribal Council, and it never even came close to failing. The women bought his fake apology every single time he did it. In fact, my favorite personal apology was when Chris told Julie, "I didn't play you. I let my heart get in the way. And I apologize." Yeah, whatever. Why not just ask for her phone number and skip all the formalities whatsoever?

Chris kisses Eliza's butt, and gets her to smile at him in return

Hell, if it worked on Eliza... let's see if it works on Julie, too.

Sugar Daddy is not amused

Step #4: Don't panic if Scout calls you a bullshit artist. Just accept it with a shrug and move on. Besides, nobody listens to Scout's new-age ramblings anyway.

Chris reacts to Scout calling him a bullshit artist

Step #5: This is the step where Chris cemented his status as my favorite bullshit artist of all time. Make sure you wrap up your jury speech by going down the line and kissing everyone's ass one more time ("Ami, you have a soft heart. And it's why you're there, because you let me back in the game.")

Then, at the end, give one more big fake apology, along with the "life lesson" that you somehow learned during the game ("Everyone on the jury possesses a genuine quality, and I don't. And that's something I will take with me... and try to become a better person.")

Chris goes down the row and tells the women how wonderful each of them are

Chris tells the jury that he plans to take all this criticism, and use it to become a better person

By this point I was rolling. Chris proclaiming that he would learn from Survivor and become a better person was my favorite B.S. jury line of all time. But that wasn't even his shining moment! Because somehow, in his final words, Chris managed to out-B.S. even himself. It was the moment when he pulled out Julie's hat, and said he was giving it back to her.

"And Julie... I brought you your hat. Because I always did see you as my little sister."

Grrrrrrrrrr.

The minute that hat came out, I was just sitting there saying to myself "Oh puhlEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE." Did Chris really pull out Julie's hat? Did I really just see that? But yes. Yes, in fact, I did. And that hat won Chris a million damn dollars. After all because he was "trying to become a better person."

Ha ha ha ha.

Meh, fuck 'em.

Sorry. The Vanuatu finale (and Chris's final speech) is probably my favorite B.S. jury performance of all time. I also consider it the best jury performance of all time. And the fact that the women all fell for it just makes it even funnier.

Just think about this for a second. I bet the producers were absolutely furious when Chris Daugherty won Vanuatu. THAT JUST WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN! Vanuatu was designed for the women to dominate, the whole season was developed with a central theme already in mind, and then Chris went and ruined everything by making the women all look like idiots. And I have to say it was one of the funniest bits of "producer irony" that I have ever seen happen on Survivor.

Vanuatu was designed for the women to walk all over (and decimate) the arrogant men. And then some guy in a red wife-beater ruins all that by tricking the women into giving them his vote. He does it by lying to them. He does it by sweet-talking them. And he does it by telling them they were "too good a person" to win a nasty game like Survivor. In other words, Chris wooed the women in Vanuatu just like Lando Calrissian would pick up girls in a bar. He used the same tactics as if he was trying to get into their pants. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear, he made them feel like they were all the most important people in the world, and you know it must have driven the producers of Vanuatu absolutely crazy. Hell it wouldn't have looked any worse if Chris had just told all the jurors that he loved them.

"And if I screwed you over, it's only... well... because of the fact I loved you."

As you can guess, it goes without saying that I loved every minute of the Chris Daugherty experience. And I especially loved his performance in the final Tribal Council. In fact, I better shut up about it before I get myself in trouble with N.O.W. So I will just say thanks, Chris. Thanks a lot, you deceptive, lying bitch.

Now give me my fucking hat back.

"Mario, I done you wrong. And I'm sincerely sorry for it."

*** SPECIAL CHRIS DAUGHERTY/BILL PAXTON BONUS SECTION ***

(Note: Remember when I said that Chris Daugherty and actor Bill Paxton have almost the exact same voice and speech cadence? Well, Mr. Paxton himself was nice enough to step in and "reenact" some of the the best moments from Chris's final Vanuatu jury performance. So enjoy the reenactment. Thanks, Bill.)

The Chris Daugherty smile

"Eliza, I truly and sincerely apologize. Do you think you can ever forgive me?"

"I think I deserve to win, for the odds I overcome."

"Here Julie. I brought you your hat."

Scout calls Chris "a bullshit artist"

"This game is something I'll take with me. And I'll try to learn from it."

Chris celebrates his win with Sarge, Bubba and Chad