The
Funny 115 - The Third One
Sophie Chapter 1 - The Ego Shatterer
#1. Sophie Outlasts Survivor
South Pacific - All Season Long
"Sophie is the one wizard in a party of people playing self-insert fighters."
-Foxx des Lauriers
Begins the game with no armor proficiencies
Author's Note: Before I begin,
let me introduce you to one of my favorite Survivor fans. His
name is Foxx des Lauriers (see above), he's a reader of mine, and I
love him because he ALWAYS has something interesting to say about
Survivor. For years he's been sending me these great quotes to use
about Sophie and South Pacific, and how South Pacific plays out,
and... a decade later... I'm excited because now I'm able to finally
(finally!) share them all with you.
I'll sprinkle Foxx's words of wisdom all throughout these chapters for you. Enjoy!
"One theme I see in South Pacific is Male Ego. Almost every woman
eliminated pre-merge was eliminated to spare and/or damage a man’s ego.
There are zero women in the endgame other than Sophie, and her ability
to look past her ego is what causes her to win in the end when all the
men crumble."
-Foxx des Lauriers
"P.S. And in a way, Probst's ego also shattered."
Okay. It's time, finally.
It's time to finally talk about Sophie Clarke.
Master of always having her eyes closed
The reason I want to talk about Sophie (and the reason I saved her
story for my #1 entry) is because... out of all the
players who have ever won Survivor over the years, I think her win
might have been the most unlikely.
No, wait. Hang on. It's actually a lot more than that.
Not only was Sophie's win probably the most unlikely, I also think
it
was probably the most impressive. In fact, I am going to make a strong
argument here that Sophie's win in South Pacific might have been the
single
greatest win of them all.
With apologies to Jeanne from Amazon
Who is, of course, a winner at life
EVERY SINGLE VARIABLE was stacked against Sophie going into South Pacific.
EVERY SINGLE BIT OF SURVIVOR PRECEDENT, for the first
twenty-two seasons of the show, was working against her. Including
variables she might not have even been aware of. Variables she had no
way to control.
EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF LOGIC told you there was no way some
twenty-two-year-old kid, right out of college, could possibly win a
returning player/captain season of Survivor. Especially a Redemption
Island-type season, which was set up for big male challenge beasts. And
especially (we'll talk about this later) at this point in Survivor
history, when the show was becoming increasingly sexist.
There was NO WAY she was supposed to win a season that basically boiled
down to one woman against a bunch of older, much flashier,
big-move-making men.
Yet, somehow, she still won.
And not only did she win, she did it with style
While usually having her eyes closed
And yes, I know. I know exactly what the reaction to this entry is going to be.
I'm definitely going to get some pushback from all the
big Survivor experts out there, for calling Sophie's win maybe the
greatest
Survivor win of all time. Because as far as I can tell, no one has ever
actually made this particular argument before. In twenty-six years of
writing about this show, I don't think I've ever seen her win ranked
even in the top five wins of all time. Let alone right at the top.
From what I have seen over the years, Sophie has generally gone down in history, and on lists made by Survivor fans,
as one of the... well...
To be nice...
Let's just say she's usually considered one of the more insignificant winners.
I mean hell, there are some jackasses who argue that Ozzy was the real symbolic winner of South Pacific
Or that South Pacific was actually the Coach season, and the jury just screwed him.
Those arguments are fine, if you want to make them. In fact, some would say I've already made them myself.
Coach and Ozzy really did have a hell of a season in South Pacific.
They both did. Either one of them would have made a very fun, very
deserving winner.
They both had the perfect arc for it.
"Especially me."
Yes, Coach. Especially you.
But as good as their story arcs were, let me lay out this next part for you pretty bluntly.
Coach and Ozzy were both pretty great when it came to South
Pacific.
And even better than that, both of their STORYLINES were great. Coach
and Ozzy had two of the greatest Survivor storylines of all time in
South Pacific,
which is one of the reasons why I think this is such a good season.
But you know what?
Sophie's storyline was even better than both of theirs.
And this is the thing that, unfortunately, I don't think most people have really appreciated over the years.
How great Sophie's story was too.
And better yet, how HER storyline depended on Coach's big storyline
And how HER storyline depended on Ozzy's big storyline
Don't worry, we'll get much deeper into storylines and story dependencies later. This is going to be pretty intricate writeup.
For now, you just have to know that - just like Coach and Ozzy, and
also Brandon and Cochran - Sophie has one hell of a memorable storyline
in South Pacific.
It might take a while to finally get to hers...
But oh boy, it's a fun one.
Because the minute you realize what her storyline actually is...
... you're going to love it
Okay, that's enough of a setup.
For now, I've told you what I'm planning to do in this writeup. I'm
going to lay out for you exactly why I think Sophie pulled out maybe the
single greatest win in Survivor history. And on top of that, I'm going
to point out that, in a season made up of big epic storylines, her
storyline might have been the biggest and most epic of them all.
Because at the end of the day, she was the one who was left
standing.
This lone, twenty-two year old woman.
Standing atop (as Foxx pointed out) a pile of shattered, enormous male egos
She was the one who ruined everyone's plans, including Jeff Probst's.
This twenty-two year old newbie, who no one had expected anything from, might not have been the flashiest winner in the world.
But she truly was...
The Grinch That Stole Coachmas
Oh, and finally...
One last thing.
Before I end this chapter, I want to share a little story with you.
This might not seem like it has anything to do with the story of Sophie
at first but, believe me, it does. This next story will explain why I
always knew this would be the #1 entry on the Funny 115.
Waaaaay back in the early days of Survivor, I used to have a online
friend named Justin Lesniewski. If you've followed Survivor over the
years, you may be familiar with him. He used to do Survivor storyline
analysis back in the day. Most people didn't know his full name,
because he went by his initials (JML) instead, but he was one of the
very first... what I would call... "Survivor story analysts" that I
ever knew. Basically, if you want me to get right down to it,
everything that I write about when it comes to Survivor these days (ie,
"the story" versus "the game"), all that comes from stuff JML and other
story analysts explained
to me back in the early days of the show. He was the one who rammed it
into my head that there were so many more interesting things going on
than
simply "who's being voted out each week."
And of all the seasons I ever talked to JML about back in the day,
South Pacific was the one he always said was the most interesting.
And just whyyyyyy did he say this was such an interesting season?
To be honest, it's because he said he couldn't figure it out. Week
in and week out, we used to talk about South Pacific. After nearly
every episode, he and I would talk about the storyline, about what we were
seeing in the episodes. And he would always point out to me that, of
all the seasons he had ever watched, of all the seasons he had ever tried to analyze, South
Pacific was the first and only one that was absolutely baffling him. It
was the first time in twenty-three seasons that, whatever the storyline
of the season was, he felt the editors were hiding it from us.
"It feels like a 'Coach is going to win' season," he explained to me many
times. "Every single story beat is telling us that Coach is going to
win. That this is a Coach redemption arc. Everything the editors are
doing is trying to steer us in that direction. They want us emotionally
prepared for when we get the first actual triumph of the Dragon Slayer."
Naturally, because I had just spent five years of my life writing about
Coach, and taking digs at what a ridiculous player he was (aka
The Funny 115, Version 2.0), the prospect of Coach winning horrified me.
Holy
shit, I thought. Coach is actually going to WIN for a change? Coach is going to SUCCEED? What's that going to do to my writeups?!?
"Yeah but here's what's confusing," JML reassured me. "They're
building him up as the winner, but they're also taking every chance
they can to make fun of the guy. It's a very mocking winner's edit,
which isn't generally something they do."
He pointed out to me that
he'd never seen something like this before on Survivor. Where they're
building a guy up to win, but also tearing him down. It was like they
were simultaneously telling two opposite stories.
"Does that mean Ozzy's the winner?" I asked him. Still somewhat clinging to hope.
"It could be," JML said, "But I don't think that's our story. They
aren't selling that hard enough to be the main story. I think that's
the big red herring story. That's the one they're using to try to distract us."
"So what do you think the actual story is?" I asked him.
And this is where JML said something that I still remember to this day.
And that set the stage for me eventually doing this writeup, nearly
fifteen years later.
"All I know is that the Dragon Slayer is going to win this season.
That's what the editors keep telling us, over and over and over again,"
he explained. "That the dragon is finally going to be slayed."
And then here came his big quote, the one that set the stage for this entry.
"... but I'm not sure that Coach is the Dragon Slayer anymore. I think there might be a new one."
You had the #1 entry the last time around?
Well, here comes your replacement
And with that, let's walk through Sophie's South Pacific storyline now.
Let's explore why, as of December of 2011, she's technically the only
Survivor player who can now legally refer to herself as...
The Dragon Slayer
Coming up next...
Sophie's epic story begins (coming soon)
