Survivor

Mariano’s greatest gift was his ability to make every player he allies himself with feel as though they were the confidant and co-conspirator who was special and wonderful and different from all the others and would never, ever be betrayed. And then: Wham! He was good at challenges (especially puzzles) and had a few other master strokes up his sleeve (such as holding an immunity idol in reserve, as insurance against the eventuality that somebody previously simpatico with him would turn on him). But his skill at politicking was what ultimately got him through.

His dominance was so total that after a certain point, it became obvious not only that he was probably going to win, but that there would be no traditional suspense this season — just the more detached sort of excitement that comes from watching a master do his thing.

In the final weeks, while Mariano fended off challenges from players who finally started to grasp the almost completely psychological nature of his game and tried in vain to counter it, I was reminded not of past “Survivor” seasons, or of traditional sports, but of what it felt like to be a kid watching my grandfather build one of his magnificent birdhouses. The seams where the pieces joined didn’t even need to be sealed to keep the water out because the thing was already watertight. That was Mariano’s game this year: watertight.

This season is the best argument I’ve seen for the proposition that the CBS series is a great new national pastime, with a complexity and metaphorical richness that no other so-called reality series provides — and that its most successful contestants are hybrids of mental and physical athletes, jockeying for advantage on a real-time chessboard with human pieces. Mariano’s gift is his understanding that once you get onto the island or into the jungle or wherever “Survivor” happens to be taking place, what happens isn’t real life, but an intense, abstracted version that’s divorced from real-world morality, no matter how stridently some players insist otherwise.

From its first season, executive producer Mark Burnett was always explicit that there were just two rules: no threatening or committing physical violence against another contestant, and no collaborating to split the prize money. As Mariano himself said during the live interview following the verdict, players tend to get confused about that because they and the other players are human beings, the friendships (or rivalries) that develop during competition feel real and in some sense are real, and the whole experience is so rarefied and overwhelming that the people who take part in it feel that nobody can ever understand them except another “Survivor” contestant. (Thus Mariano’s marriage to Brkich — and “Redemption Island” cast-member David Murphy’s on-air proposal last night to a a rather annoyed-seeming Carolina Eastwood, a contestant on 2009′s “Survivor: Tocantins.”)

But it really is just a game. You can’t go into it clinging to a personal code of honor or a religious conviction and expect to win. And if you get voted off “Survivor” and start whining about how this player or that player was deceptive or insincere, you sound dumb. You might as well join a poker game and then complain when another player successfully bluffs you. “B-b-but you LIED to me! You made me think you had a good hand, and you didn’t!”

Some of the tirades-posing-as-questions during the final vote proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the people who lost to Mariano deserved to lose, because they had failed to grasp what the game was about (physical endurance; long-term, chess-like strategizing; politics or gangland-style alliance building) and were judging Rob by irrelevant, self-serving, hypocritical standards.

“All the people that you betrayed are having a hard time understanding who you really are,” said Matt Elrod, the devout Christian who spent much of the series in solitude on Redemption Island, vanquishing other rejectees and trying to find his way back into the main competition. “None of you played a respectable game,” said Julie Wolfe, chastising Mariano and the other two finalists, Phillip Sheppard and Natalie Tenerelli, both of whom had no problem admitting that they made it to the end by being unswervingly loyal to Mariano. Then, singling out Tenerelli, she said, “Do you think your parents would be proud of the way that you played the game? Because if you were my daughter, the answer would be no.”

What show did these people think they were on? At least the elapsed time between the final tribal council vote and the reading of the verdict mellowed them, and led them to admit what was already apparent to anybody who’d watch so much as a single episode this year: “Survivor” is a great and challenging game, and Mariano is the best who ever played it.

The latest wrinkle is announced in the title of this season: “Survivor: Redemption Island.” The “island” is actually an arena where people voted out of the main competition go up against other expelled tribe members in one-on-one competitions. Whoever survives those secondary challenges eventually returns to the main competition, invigorated by victory and (presumably) looking for payback against the people who voted them out. To jazz things up even more, the producers have brought back a couple of veteran “Survivor” players: “Boston” Rob Mariano, who appeared in three incarnations of the series, and Russell Hantz, who played against Rob in “Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains.”

Hantz, a squat hustler who reminds me of a young Bob Hoskins, pursued his time-tested strategy of allying himself with two young women (on this “Survivor,” his allies were a flirty schemer named Stephanie and her best pal Krista). The gambit didn’t work because the rest of his tribe found Russell deeply untrustworthy even by “Survivor” standards, and physically revolting to boot. (He’d shaved his armpits before arriving on the island and somehow acquired pustulent scabs.) To make matters worse, Russell also got outfoxed by an aw-shucks farmer named Ralph, whom Russell had incorrectly pegged as “the dumbest person on the face of the earth.” Turns out Ralph only play-acts stupidity, and is actually a likable schemer who found the personal immunity idol shortly after landing on the island and not only kept his find a secret from Russell but played all sorts of head games with him.

Russell was voted out of his tribe and sent to Redemption Island last week, a turn of events that came as an enormous shock to him. (Anybody who makes it into the cast of “Survivor” is an alpha dog; alpha dogs often presume themselves invincible until reality slaps them across the face.) On last night’s show, he entered the arena with another voted-off cast member, Matt — a polite young blond fellow who says he’s doing everything for the glory of his God — and got beaten and sent packing. When host Jeff Probst confirmed Russell’s fate, the burly man started crying, then lowered the brim of his hat to hide his tears; but within moments he’d bucked up — out of respect for the game, he explained — and exited with as much dignity as he could muster. This is just great TV, simultaneously grandiose and human-scaled — a “Survivor ” specialty.

Boston Rob has been even more entertaining.  A grinning stud with a face like a baby Ray Liotta, he’s a classic charismatic trickster. If he were a character in a prison movie, he’d be the inmate who can get you any kind of contraband if the price is right. Rob seems completely devoid of conscience — at least in this game — but he justifies his ruthlessness in a very convincing way, treating it as an analog for life, another arena in which there really are no constraints except the ones you personally decide to observe.

True, on the island, as in the real world, there are rules, and if you break them you can be punished (or at least ostracized by your fellow citizens), and Rob knows this. But at the same time, he doesn’t believe in adhering to any rule that doesn’t advance his social station — especially rules that exist mainly to reassure all the players that they’re well-bred ladies and gentlemen even as they’re scrambling to deceive and defeat each other. That’s why Rob was so disgusted whenever his former teammate Matt would congratulate the other side after losing to them in competition. The post-game handshake offended Rob so much, in fact, that he orchestrated Matt’s ouster almost entirely on those grounds.

Another thing that’s returned to the forefront this season is the show’s ability to fill the screen with psychologically complex, often vividly odd human beings — the kinds of people you might see in a documentary by the Maysles Brothers (“Salesman“) or in the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest (“Best in Show“). The cream of the crop this season is undoubtedly Phillip Sheppard. He used to be a federal agent and sees fit to mention that fact every 45 seconds. He also keeps telling everyone who’ll listen that his word is his bond, which on “Survivor” either marks a player as laughably naive or totally dishonest. He has a gorilla tattoo on one arm and a lion tattoo on the other; don’t ask him to explain what they mean unless you want to hear a story longer than “The Iliad.”

Phillip has spent much of this season tromping around the island in raggedy fuchsia briefs, making condescending remarks to the women (and a few of the men), bragging about how he can spot a liar instantly, and otherwise demanding to be praised as the nicest, coolest, most brilliant hombre alive.  An episode a couple of weeks ago practically stopped in its tracks to observe Phillip trying to hunt tiny crabs with a huge spear; the hunt was intercut with a tearful Phillip monologue about how proud he was to don a uniform and serve the greatest country on earth. The segment deftly walked the line between mocking Phillip and gazing in awe at his originality and utter lack of self-consciousness.  So much of “Survivor” is like this: a game show, a window into American delusion, and a grand opportunity to people-watch.